Monday, July 13, 2009

Doing something because you want to

When I graduated High School, I wanted to write, I loved it and it was easy. That same desire followed me into college. When I found out at my sophomore year that my university had now started a undergraduate creative writing major I enthusiastically changed my major. the first two semesters I loved my creative writing classes. The homework was to write and read for workshop what others students wrote. Writing was easy, and the stories I liked were wonderful to read and those i didn't I would just read what I needed to give a comment(harsh, but for me necessary).
Then second semester of my junior year I noticed a change, writing was no longer as easy and not near as fun. I tried to brush it off, but then came senior year. Instead of inspiring me, the workshops just convinced me that if the members of my class were a real sample of the next generation of writers, I would have nothing but the old classics to read. It seemed no one knew how to write anything that didn't involve humanity/morality is horrible, sex and molestation, or drug use as the central theme. I felt like my writing was boring too or not good enough. Consequentially, I stopped writing prose fiction (although I didn't realize it at the time). Despite this fact, I continued to think that I would magically write volumes after I graduated and that my husband would have to pry me off the computer, but it didn't happen.
I would write a little bit, but not regularly or in vast quantities like I thought I should.Thus, I became more discouraged and writing became even harder. This cycle repeated until I ultimately told my husband, "I've made a huge mistake, I don't have what it takes to be a writer. I am no longer going to write."
It was soon after this that I again found hope. After a year or wondering why I couldn't write it finally clicked. The strange thing is that I thought I knew this before, but really it took time to learn. I needed to write because I wanted to and for no other reason. That concept was hard for me because I thought reasons like I needed to help bring in income, or I needed to write something to inspire others were much more important reasons, but they aren't enough. I learned that if you really want to do something well, you individually need to find a way to take satisfaction in it. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I think at least with thing that you create, if you don't care about it or if you are more concerned with the outcome of what you are doing then in the joy of creating; how will anything you create have a life either individually or on its own?
Well I guess this post is rather rant-like but perhaps its not.

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