Writing About Writing

I've always found that writing about writing tends to fall into self-indulgence. Even as I just begin to compose this entry, a squawky little voice in my head is telling me: "don't try to sound like you know what you're talking about too much."

Such reservations most likely stem from my perpetual awareness of what an amateur I am. Why should anybody listen to what some 22-year-old-- just a kid, really, in the grand scheme of things-- has to say?

And yet, that very question is exactly what motivates me. What do I have to say? I'll prove it to you. If another human being can connect with or derive some kind of meaning from my written word, then I know I've succeeded... mostly. (I don't believe that anyone is ever 100%, fully, truly satisfied with what they've created. Even if you're 99.9% happy, there will always be that irking 0.1%, which leaves you with two choices: cast it aside, or let it eat at you. As much as I try to pick the former, the latter often wins out.)

So here I am. This is the period in my life where I'm aspiring, hoping, dreaming that I can one day turn an interest into a career. How does anyone even begin to do this?

There's only one way I know how: cultivate. It's like taking care of a plant: unless I nurture this passion, it won't grow and develop into something greater. Letting it die would be sad, but it would be even more pitiful. And just downright lazy. (I'm no botanist, but I'm pretty sure of this.)

Thus, with my college newspaper column gone (and a circulation of 5,000+), the first step was the very blog that you're looking at right now. These past few months, DTRS has been an adequate outlet for those sporadic bursts of inspiration that bubble up in my brain. When they threaten to spill over, that's when I take up the pen and paper (err, keyboard and monitor) and get to work. While I certainly don't write in it as much as I would like-- the daily 8:30-4:30 is more draining that I initially predicted-- I'm just glad that it didn't crash on the takeoff and fizzle quickly into a failed experiment. So far, so good.

The next step: I just began a six-week "Nonfiction 101" writing course with the Gotham Writers' Workshop in Midtown Manhattan. If you're a New Yorker, then you've probably seen their little yellow newspaper kiosks interspersed on street corners around the city at some point. After 3 months to the day (eep!) as a full-time working stiff, I've felt achingly inhibited both intellectually and creatively (the true nerd actually misses being in class-- that's me). So I signed up for a course with Gotham while I could still afford it (the student loan bills start rolling in next month-- I know nothing more terrifying at the moment).

The verdict is still out. I'm the youngest person in the class, and the only recent college graduate. The "students" include five lawyers or lawyers-in-training, two therapists, and several businesspersons. Oh, and our teacher is a published author who spent three years in a Korean prison when he wasn't much older than I am now. An intimidating environment? Pardon my language, but I almost shat myself.

And yet, it felt strangely familiar at the same time. All fourteen of us sat around a rectangular table facing one another. We did a series of writing exercises pertaining to memoir and shared some of them with the class. I forced myself to raise my hand and read, because I've done this before and can do it again. Spontaneous, in-class, timed freewriting-- an activity that many find natural and liberating-- is actually my Achilles heel. (I'm the nut who thinks too much and agonizes over each and every word. Ask my girlfriend; she's seen me at my worst.) All the more of a reason, then, that I should be working on it.

As jittery as I can be, I try to remind myself that if I had allowed fear to defeat me, then I honestly wouldn't have accomplished much of anything in my life. Coming out, giving Villanova a chance, and letting myself love and be happy-- none of these would have happened. I can't even fathom the thought of a universe in which I'm still trapped in my 17-year-old body. Repression and regret got me absolutely nowhere, and the same lesson can be applied to writing: as much as writing frustrates me to no end, I'm a thousand times more frustrated when I'm not writing.

Let that be my mantra. As much as life is so uncertain at this stage, at least I've found one thing I'm absolutely sure of.