011912 -- For Writers
Jan. 19th, 2012 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memorialrainbowIt's 7:11PM right now. I'm sitting up in the B&N at 53rd and Lex, working on Cosmic. I'm on page 169 out of 504; I'm sure the final word count will change, among other things. I don't know how long I'll sit here without getting uncomfortable; I have to move often. Dylan is downstairs, in a public space, doing a rehearsal for a play. The dorkfaces downstairs wouldn't let me charge my laptop, so I came back up here. (I did buy books here earlier -- I have a receipt. Someone recommended Across the Universe, so I bought that, as well as Leanna Renee Hieber's latest! I was super stoked about that.)
Writing makes me cry. It makes me cry in ways that music doesn't. I cried writing in Shriver one time, just happy to cry, to feel something. I bawled my eyes out when Dylan put his copy of Spangler Gotham right up beside Brian in the bookstore we were in. (See all the Pondicherry entries I wrote. Brian Jacques is, and will always be, my favorite author. He's the one who got me started.) And I kind of teared up even sitting up here, although my left leg is about to go numb after six minutes of sitting/thumbing through my new books/crossing and uncrossing my legs. Damn this skirt. At least I have leggings on.
I love B&N not because it's B&N, but because it feels like home. It could be any bookstore, really. (Borders...teeheehee! Some of you will eventually get that Cosmic reference.) When I look at the books here, I see possibilities, endless, spreading out as a canvas in front of me. I especially like the kids section, where nothing is set in stone and everything is a discovery.
I remember being a kid and going to the huge Barnes and Noble in Easton, being awed at all of the books there. I remember being even YOUNGER than that, reading when nobody else knew what that was. From the beginning of time, I was certainly a freak; my synesthesia made reading easily (but, somehow, writing an impossibility -- I hadn't figured out how to make the colors myself on page). I was the kid who got called on in class to read notes. When I was in kindergarten, one day we did a scavenger hunt, but the teacher was absent. In the sub's notes, she put my name down as the one to read the clues.
But my ability for reading, as I mentioned before, did not translate well into writing. My first attempts at putting together words were messy; I remember trying to write a recipe for peanut butter and jelly and just writing the first letters of each word, unable to do the rest. I loved making up stories in my head, putting them to music, but could not write them down that well, if at all. My stories were first translated through drawing, and then through music, which both developed around the same time.
When I created stories as a young kid, I always assumed they would grow to become animated pictures. This was in the Disney golden age, and Don Bluth's name was still big as well. (The irony of An American Tail right now, I SWEAR!) But as I grew, two different things happened -- I was teased for my drawings, and I was renowned for my musical prowess. Both I considered as just playing -- I just had fun with it! I mean, yes, I wanted to do that someday, to have my pictures on the big screen with their respective musics.
To create with people. But I couldn't find anybody who understood, who could play with colors and pictures the way I could, who wanted to spend the rest of their life coloring. And I was alienated.
In sixth grade was when it happened -- I picked up my first book by Brian. It wasn't a place to hide, really -- I hid in my music. But I could see that worlds could be built with words. I wanted to do that -- not because it was fun, or really because it was a challenge. I wanted to create worlds like that, as well. But I also sensed that you did not need a group of people to create a novel, like you needed a group to create an animated film. You didn't have to (at least immediately) have everybody telling you how to do it, or not to do it.
So, I tried. God, how awful I was for a really REALLY fucking long time. Totally horrid. I wrote parts of books and full books for at least eight years before I was even remotely good.
Writing has never been like music for me. Music just comes to me naturally. Ever since I've been tinkering around with that eight-key piano at age six, I've been writing music. I learned, but I created. Writing music was as natural as breathing for me. By contrast, writing words was like constipation -- I had to do it, and I really wanted to do it, but it was HARD AS HELL. (Sorry for any mental images.) And I don't even remember when it started -- from the very beginning, when music took over and people took notice of me because of it, there was an expectation. It was like there was a star beside "musician" on the list of things I did, with the star reading, "You better fucking do something with this gift, or it will be a waste." Naturally, because my parents pushed me to do music, to play and to be part of performances, I assumed I had to do something with that. But I didn't. That's not what I wanted at all. What I wanted was to continue playing with music, but I didn't want to be forced into doing something with it. To this day, part of my heart still feels like a failure because I didn't become a famous pop star at sixteen. But the 98% of the rest of me knows that's ridiculous, that I never wanted that anyway.
But still...I won't lie when I said that's part of why I wanted to move to New York. I wanted opportunities, I wanted to create with people, yes. But I don't really want to write music with people. I just want to write. I mean...words. Music is easy. Novels are hard as hell. I sit down at a piano and it just happens. By contrast, I've been planning Cosmic since July, and it's January and the mofo is nowhere near done. I am not talented at writing. AT ALL. But I have worked my ass off at it, and something that's usually so solitary has become a group event (thanks to that thing I do every November).
Don't you get it? I'll probably never push myself at music. That's not a bad thing. I am horribly talented at music, because of my synesthesia and perfect pitch, but it's always been within my reach. I've never had to work for it. By contrast, the words that sit on the shelves in front of me were something I once couldn't make out.
I will never be a famous musician. But I will be a famous author.
I want to write.
I want to write.
Okay...NOW I'm crying.
When I think of Dylan and how focused he gets on what he does, I think of how I write. When we were sitting at Panera earlier in Queens, Dylan was all tunnel on his acting gig websites, answering emails and this and that and blah blah blah. I was kind of peeved -- we were supposed to be having a planning meeting about my own story -- but I eventually just went back to Cosmic. And then I realized that I could be working on some of my music instead, but I was working on Cosmic. It's not that I don't want to work on music -- I do all the time. But when I get a completed album, or a completed song, I don't get that relief, that sense of satisfaction, of "I did it!" that I get when I finish a chapter of Cosmic, forbid an entire book. (I think I cried at the last write-in when I actually completed my 110K book in a month. That or I bought myself a drink.)
Knowing that this is what I want -- to give my book to some sixth grader and to tell them that anything is possible -- that's what I want. It's what I seriously want. And God, now I'm crying like the woman in Something's Gotta Give, all over the place in front of my Mac and typing like crazy (although she was writing a play). Effing eich, why don't I have tissues.
This is what I want, more than anything. Maybe I should go back to school not for music, but for creative writing? I mean, I'll be living out of a box either way, I suppose. Perhaps I'm like the kid who just now realized what she wants to be when she grows up.
And tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna tell myself for the umpteenth time that I'm a musician, and that I gotta be world famous or my talents are worth nothing. Perhaps I should have set fire to the 530 instead of Brian's books in Pondicherry. I am not leaving music behind, though -- I'm just becoming more at home among these books.
Perhaps.
Or maybe I will wake up in the morning, grab my best friend, go to Starbucks, get another frapp, and edit the thing that is most important to me. More important than any song, any performance, more precious than any time I've done an audition, more difficult than any time I've put my violin to my chin or have sat down at a piano. When I play, I close my eyes, I lose myself. But when I write, I open my eyes, I find myself. Perhaps that's the difference.
Will you help me? You, the reader. The person I've written to, in one way or another, for years. For my world of music only contains me, but I write for people, even an invisible people. Not help me write, but help me be myself. Help me put my thumbs up, to Ringo, to Thunderbolt, and weave a string of words. I once wrote that I was like a spider, spinning tales, making all of the words flow together, carefully choosing which words to put into the story. Help me know not which words to choose, but when to ask for help, when to post, when to be excited, when to take a chance. But most importantly, help me be me. Not the me I never wanted to be, but the me I've been searching for all along.
That me is right here.
And that me needs a huge box of Kleenex, a huge reality check...and to work on her most precious thing.
Writing makes me cry. It makes me cry in ways that music doesn't. I cried writing in Shriver one time, just happy to cry, to feel something. I bawled my eyes out when Dylan put his copy of Spangler Gotham right up beside Brian in the bookstore we were in. (See all the Pondicherry entries I wrote. Brian Jacques is, and will always be, my favorite author. He's the one who got me started.) And I kind of teared up even sitting up here, although my left leg is about to go numb after six minutes of sitting/thumbing through my new books/crossing and uncrossing my legs. Damn this skirt. At least I have leggings on.
I love B&N not because it's B&N, but because it feels like home. It could be any bookstore, really. (Borders...teeheehee! Some of you will eventually get that Cosmic reference.) When I look at the books here, I see possibilities, endless, spreading out as a canvas in front of me. I especially like the kids section, where nothing is set in stone and everything is a discovery.
I remember being a kid and going to the huge Barnes and Noble in Easton, being awed at all of the books there. I remember being even YOUNGER than that, reading when nobody else knew what that was. From the beginning of time, I was certainly a freak; my synesthesia made reading easily (but, somehow, writing an impossibility -- I hadn't figured out how to make the colors myself on page). I was the kid who got called on in class to read notes. When I was in kindergarten, one day we did a scavenger hunt, but the teacher was absent. In the sub's notes, she put my name down as the one to read the clues.
But my ability for reading, as I mentioned before, did not translate well into writing. My first attempts at putting together words were messy; I remember trying to write a recipe for peanut butter and jelly and just writing the first letters of each word, unable to do the rest. I loved making up stories in my head, putting them to music, but could not write them down that well, if at all. My stories were first translated through drawing, and then through music, which both developed around the same time.
When I created stories as a young kid, I always assumed they would grow to become animated pictures. This was in the Disney golden age, and Don Bluth's name was still big as well. (The irony of An American Tail right now, I SWEAR!) But as I grew, two different things happened -- I was teased for my drawings, and I was renowned for my musical prowess. Both I considered as just playing -- I just had fun with it! I mean, yes, I wanted to do that someday, to have my pictures on the big screen with their respective musics.
To create with people. But I couldn't find anybody who understood, who could play with colors and pictures the way I could, who wanted to spend the rest of their life coloring. And I was alienated.
In sixth grade was when it happened -- I picked up my first book by Brian. It wasn't a place to hide, really -- I hid in my music. But I could see that worlds could be built with words. I wanted to do that -- not because it was fun, or really because it was a challenge. I wanted to create worlds like that, as well. But I also sensed that you did not need a group of people to create a novel, like you needed a group to create an animated film. You didn't have to (at least immediately) have everybody telling you how to do it, or not to do it.
So, I tried. God, how awful I was for a really REALLY fucking long time. Totally horrid. I wrote parts of books and full books for at least eight years before I was even remotely good.
Writing has never been like music for me. Music just comes to me naturally. Ever since I've been tinkering around with that eight-key piano at age six, I've been writing music. I learned, but I created. Writing music was as natural as breathing for me. By contrast, writing words was like constipation -- I had to do it, and I really wanted to do it, but it was HARD AS HELL. (Sorry for any mental images.) And I don't even remember when it started -- from the very beginning, when music took over and people took notice of me because of it, there was an expectation. It was like there was a star beside "musician" on the list of things I did, with the star reading, "You better fucking do something with this gift, or it will be a waste." Naturally, because my parents pushed me to do music, to play and to be part of performances, I assumed I had to do something with that. But I didn't. That's not what I wanted at all. What I wanted was to continue playing with music, but I didn't want to be forced into doing something with it. To this day, part of my heart still feels like a failure because I didn't become a famous pop star at sixteen. But the 98% of the rest of me knows that's ridiculous, that I never wanted that anyway.
But still...I won't lie when I said that's part of why I wanted to move to New York. I wanted opportunities, I wanted to create with people, yes. But I don't really want to write music with people. I just want to write. I mean...words. Music is easy. Novels are hard as hell. I sit down at a piano and it just happens. By contrast, I've been planning Cosmic since July, and it's January and the mofo is nowhere near done. I am not talented at writing. AT ALL. But I have worked my ass off at it, and something that's usually so solitary has become a group event (thanks to that thing I do every November).
Don't you get it? I'll probably never push myself at music. That's not a bad thing. I am horribly talented at music, because of my synesthesia and perfect pitch, but it's always been within my reach. I've never had to work for it. By contrast, the words that sit on the shelves in front of me were something I once couldn't make out.
I will never be a famous musician. But I will be a famous author.
I want to write.
I want to write.
Okay...NOW I'm crying.
When I think of Dylan and how focused he gets on what he does, I think of how I write. When we were sitting at Panera earlier in Queens, Dylan was all tunnel on his acting gig websites, answering emails and this and that and blah blah blah. I was kind of peeved -- we were supposed to be having a planning meeting about my own story -- but I eventually just went back to Cosmic. And then I realized that I could be working on some of my music instead, but I was working on Cosmic. It's not that I don't want to work on music -- I do all the time. But when I get a completed album, or a completed song, I don't get that relief, that sense of satisfaction, of "I did it!" that I get when I finish a chapter of Cosmic, forbid an entire book. (I think I cried at the last write-in when I actually completed my 110K book in a month. That or I bought myself a drink.)
Knowing that this is what I want -- to give my book to some sixth grader and to tell them that anything is possible -- that's what I want. It's what I seriously want. And God, now I'm crying like the woman in Something's Gotta Give, all over the place in front of my Mac and typing like crazy (although she was writing a play). Effing eich, why don't I have tissues.
This is what I want, more than anything. Maybe I should go back to school not for music, but for creative writing? I mean, I'll be living out of a box either way, I suppose. Perhaps I'm like the kid who just now realized what she wants to be when she grows up.
And tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna tell myself for the umpteenth time that I'm a musician, and that I gotta be world famous or my talents are worth nothing. Perhaps I should have set fire to the 530 instead of Brian's books in Pondicherry. I am not leaving music behind, though -- I'm just becoming more at home among these books.
Perhaps.
Or maybe I will wake up in the morning, grab my best friend, go to Starbucks, get another frapp, and edit the thing that is most important to me. More important than any song, any performance, more precious than any time I've done an audition, more difficult than any time I've put my violin to my chin or have sat down at a piano. When I play, I close my eyes, I lose myself. But when I write, I open my eyes, I find myself. Perhaps that's the difference.
Will you help me? You, the reader. The person I've written to, in one way or another, for years. For my world of music only contains me, but I write for people, even an invisible people. Not help me write, but help me be myself. Help me put my thumbs up, to Ringo, to Thunderbolt, and weave a string of words. I once wrote that I was like a spider, spinning tales, making all of the words flow together, carefully choosing which words to put into the story. Help me know not which words to choose, but when to ask for help, when to post, when to be excited, when to take a chance. But most importantly, help me be me. Not the me I never wanted to be, but the me I've been searching for all along.
That me is right here.
And that me needs a huge box of Kleenex, a huge reality check...and to work on her most precious thing.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 12:52 pm (UTC)I feel like I need to come up with another nickname for you now though. NovelStar? AuthorStar? WordsmithStar? Well, it'll come to me eventually. XD
I'm very proud of you. You are so brave.