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So I was sitting in the bathtub tonight reading the 25th anniversary issue of The Sun when this strange thought popped into my head: I'd like to be published.
I haven't considered that thought seriously in years. I did consider it for a short while when I was involved with "J.A." though. She's a writer, and being an author was always her dream. (The second to last time she would talk to me I heard that she had been brainwashed into "I know I could never make a living at writing, but I think I'd like to be an editor" and last time she would talk to me I heard that she's considering being an engineer, since her father won't pay for her to be an english major. He says it's impractical, or something, and she apparently believes him that you need to be an english major to be an editor. But that's a whole other story.) I have always had trouble with the idea of trying to get things published. It's one of the few things I've been interested in that I haven't researched to death. Generally, I'm not sure my self-confidence could take it. I don't deal well with not being the best. What I would publish would be a huge problem, too. I don't write poems... I can't understand them when I read them, how am I supposed to write my own. Although it is ironic, when you think about it, that I'm obsessed with song lyrics but not poems. I think I just need someone to sing the poem, and that's out, because I can't sing. I haven't written an actual story in years. My writing tends to be confessional little blurbs that go back and forth in time and are filled with meaningless little tangents. Not exactly the makings of a book. Besides, I have trouble with grammar. Specifically, with the word "they". I think the singular "they" is the most useful word in the English language, but I've never run across an English teacher who would even admit it existed. (translation: English teachers say it's illegal to say "If anyone has any objections, they should speak now or forever hold their peace" when I think that's the way it should be said. The alternative is to say "he or she" everytime) I'm told (by an article in Ms. which is admittedly bias) that the singular they was used by Shakespeare, Dickens, Virginia Woolf, and hundreds of other writers and was considered to be just fine, until someone (the article says who, but the article's in my dorm room) decided that the proper way to deal with the situation was to say "He" and that "He" could encompass the whole population. (Or the entire population of people who were worth including, depending on how you look at things.) and nobody really argued because there wasn't really anybody to argue until the 70's or so. That's another problem with my writing... it tends to not be in sentences. I'm told that sentences are the preferred way to organize a paragraph, but I don't really have those either. My thoughts are thoughts and they really don't come out into premade little packages of sentences and paragraphs. I suppose the point is to make them fit into sentences and paragraphs, and that makes sense for things like term papers that are business, but if you're talking about thoughts, it doesn't work that way. If I tried to stick my thoughts into sentences, I'd lose any element of truth that managed to make it onto the page the first time around. I am, of course, assuming that nobody would want to publish a rambling roundabout story that contained singular "they"s but I think that's a fair assumption. Either that or a damn good excuse. For me, I mean. To not try. I think I'd like to try, though. Of course I'd have to come up with some kind of a subject. I think I heard somewhere that stories are supposed to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That's definitely out, it'll never happen. I've also heard that you should write what you know. Well, I do that, on an (almost) daily basis, but that's out. It's one thing to do this when I don't have to look at you. It's another thing entirely to put my full name on something and say, "This is me. I did this. And I don't care who reads it or who knows." That might just be too scary. I think I can only be brave anonymously. Not that it's entirely anonymous. I mean, you all probably have a decent idea of where I live and what school I go to and I suppose it's more than possible that someday someone in my dorm will come up to me and say "did I hear that you're 17 and a junior? Do you have a webpage?" but I really doubt it. There just aren't enough of you. I had 13 regular readers last time I counted. (Besides, I'm the only person in my dorm who spends any amount of time at all on the internet. Doing something other than chatting or creating an online shrine to the Barenaked Ladies, anyway.) The thing is, writing a story would involve thinking. This involves thinking as little as possible. My journal writing strategy is to sit down and try really hard to get my fingers working directly for my brain without my thoughts interfering in the matter. If I think to much I start to think "What are you doing, Sarah!? You're telling you're life story to total strangers who somehow stumbled onto this website and they'll take one look and think, "this is too strange" and move on and they'll never get a change to see the real you so make the thoughts stop so so you can write" ...and they go on like that for a while, my brain saying the thoughts are the problem and the thoughts saying the brain is the problem. And there really is a distinction between the two at the time, but I can't tell you what exactly it is. (I'm thinking it goes along the lines of conscious vs unconscious but that doesn't make much sense because the unconscious can't argue, or if it did, you wouldn't know about it and it certainly couldn't put up much of a fight that way.) I think I got off the topic somewhere up there. What it really boils down to is I don't try to write something that could be published, because it is beyond me to believe that I could write something someone else would want to read. And then of course I look at this website and notice that I've had over 1,000 hits and figure there must be someone out there who enjoyed it and then I know there was because occasionally they'll even e-mail me and tell me so. (singular "they" there, did you catch it?) I am neurotic enough to let things like that keep me from trying and gullible enough to talk myself into believing that's why I do it. And now that I've said that, the real problem would probably be writer's block which would be brought on by the little voices in my head that tell me I'm not good enough. The minute I thought up something that might make a good story, they'd start telling me that nobody wants to read about that. My biggest fear in life is that people will think I am boring. Now I realize that having said that someone is bound to e-mail me saying "You're not boring!" because objectively I can see how my life is interesting just because it's different. My problem with that is that my life is not me. I have done some interesting things, but those aren't me, they're just things I've done. And the me inside my head has difficulty articulating the difference, but there is one. I think it mostly comes from the "freak" factor. I can list the things that make me stand out, I've done it before, but that's never going to mean that those things are who I am. I am just an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances, and I'm afraid that that ordinary person is fairly boring. Really, I suppose it's slightly silly to sit here writing about how nobody would want to read what I write, when I'm writing something that someone else is going to read. (um. That did make sense. Really.) I guess there's just a distinction in my brain between people who spend time sitting in front of a computer searching out other peoples' journals (like I do.) and people who sit behind desks and read things critically and decide whether or not their "worthy." I hate to be judged by anyone but myself. |
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