My Gratitude to Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs 5/22/08

I’ve never been good at writing for the sake of writing. This might be why I’ve never been fond of writing in a journal. Also, could be the cause of all that animosity I felt towards Ethan’s freewrites. I felt awful every time I sat down to do one, even when I felt that the finished product could be promising. There’s another reason why I started this blog. I need to develop that talent, of staring at a bright, fresh page without anything in my head at all, and then looking up twenty minutes later to find myself.
Writing has always been that way for me, of “finding myself.” A way of dealing with my feelings, my desires and despairs. Usually, they come out as fiction, or manifest themselves through my characters.
Okay, I just said “my characters,” but I don’t mean it. When I think of them in my head, they’re not characters. I’m not going to screw with you, anonymous reader. I’m all about honesty in this, my sunshiney psychosis.
They are real people. Or perhaps, they’re symptoms of my multiple personalities. But again, that’s giving myself too much credit. Each one of them is a part of me, but they are more than just me. Sometimes they show me what’s up, teach me what I’ve got to learn. I guess they’re kind of like children in that way. And I know, I know, they’ve been described that way before. I didn’t understand before. I figured I did, but I didn’t really. I do now.
They start in my head, formed from some raw materials of my personality. Then they develop personalities of their own. They gain insights beyond my own. They experience things that I could never even imagine on my own. If they’re lucky enough, they even get speckled into writing.
No, you’re right. Speckled isn’t a verb. I’m making it one. Speckled, as in, only bits and pieces of them make it onto the page. Tragic, I know. And I am wholly to blame, not them. It is my ineptitude as a writer, and as a human being, that leaves them deformed and wanting. Trust me, no one is more sickened by this heinous crime than I am.
So, here is another reason I’m trying out this blog thing. Because what I’ve been doing, sitting down with the speckles and thinking that I’m somehow magically going to have the power to make them whole—it’s just not working! Gah! This, this thought binge might help, though. At least it helps me better understand what I’m feeling. Or does it cast further confusion in my mind…?
…Hmmm…
Yeah. Yeah, it does.
Both.
It seems that when I face my emotions, and come to better understand them, it is those moments that I catch light in those blank spaces of the characters. I know them better. So, if I’m writing those realizations and understandings down, maybe I can start getting those people in my head down a bit better on paper.
Right. Well…no. Honesty again. It hasn’t helped yet. I did the freewrite thing for a whole semester. And the story? Totally blocked up. No progress. You know what has helped lately? Recreational reading. Which wasn’t doing the trick during the last few months. I went nowhere with the story in the last six months. (Six months! Ah!)
I got distracted at the bookcase a few days ago and ended up sitting and reading through the third Harry Potter book for the, erm…two millionth time?
No, sixth, actually. The most I’ve ever read anything. Even that hungry caterpillar book! Yeah, Azkaban’s my favorite. I’m not ashamed. I’m just finally starting to understand why it’s my favorite. I’m coming to terms with the emotions it makes me feel. Azkaban in tern opens up those emotions within me, so that I can see them in my characters. Then BAM, I finally understand the tension between these two people in my head, and this big dark spot in their histories finally brightens up, and I see that their histories, which I thought were separate until later, are actually crossed way back here, ah! And everything makes so much sense! It’s so brilliant!
You must understand, this is the biggest revelation I’ve had concerning these people for months and months! I was starting to think I wasn’t meant to tell their story. I was beginning to move on. Move off of writing fiction altogether, actually, I was that frustrated.
So, my gratitude to Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. I owe them so much.