A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~ Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)
Here's the thing: I tell people who matter in my life that I long to be a writer. I tell them not once, not twice, but probably a zillion times. Some of them would nicely ask what I write, and I'd stumble for an answer. One or two of them, nicely still, would say that if I really want to be a writer, then I'd stop talking about it and actually write.
Admittedly I am guilty of not writing enough. I blame this on my fear of looking stupid: I wonder why it matters so much to me not to look stupid, when day-in and day-out I already project to the world how stupid I am by my usual foot-in-mouth actions. I want my writing to be impeccable, no typos, no grammatical mistakes, backed up by nice observations (!), all words sitting prettily next to each other with perfect coherence.
This fear can be paralyzing, especially when I don't really have to own-up to my laziness. It's not like an academic advisor would be scolding me if I didn't submit an article on time, or that I'd be dropped out of uni if I didn't finish a thesis after a definite time-frame (this was mainly why I could finish all my schoolwork on time: not because I definitely loved my research, but because I loved deadlines so much it helped me to forget my fear of producing imperfect manuscripts.)
Sometimes, I also blame academic writing. Writing academic papers and research proposals took a lot of my time outside teaching hours, and yours truly are too lazy to write at home. This means, according to a dear friend, I don't really want to be a writer. A writer makes time to write, this friend noted, a writer does not makes excuses not to write. To which I am guilty as charged.
So far, aside from the academic writing with their nice deadlines, I only wrote 1 tiny essay for a magazine, a short-story which was published 3 years ago (!), two blogs which are updated about 3 times a year. Yeah, that bad.
R bought me nice notebooks, actually, so that I could write long-hand, anywhere without a computer. I only started to write in the first notebook 3 months after he bought it. And the other notebook? Still empty, tight-wrapped, almost 7 months after he gave it to me.
This other notebook, is a Moleskin, my first Moleskin and I admit it scares me a bit. Everybody seems to buy Moleskins right and left, I know, but to me a Moleskin is...sacred? Especially because when he handed it to me, he just had to remind me that it was the exact type of notebooks used by Ernest Hemingway. Ouch.
Okay, nobody is comparing me to Ernest Hemingway. It's all stupid thinking that I'd be that accomplished, but I did spend time to think up a "theme" of the essays I dreamed to write longhand on that notebook. And of course, the vicious cycle continues: I got too afraid of writing I ended up leaving the notebook untouched.
This has got to change. So here is my masochistic way of straightening up my act: I am going to blog everyday for the next 31 days. Gulp.
And the fact that I fear looking stupid actually helps me in this project. Publicly saying (although, again, only 2 people read this blog but they are still...part of public) that I'll blog for 31 days straight and not delivering equals falling flat on my face. And that counts as looking very, very stupid.
I am hoping that once I strengthen my writing muscles enough, I'll be able to fill up that Moleskin. Somehow I even dare to hope that strengthening these sagging muscles won't take as long as 31 days.
And to that, I raise my glass.
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