Existential crisis #53789
Lately, I've been wondering if blogging is really the medium for stuff I'm interested in exploring.
The first problem is that I'm a little introverted. To be a little more accurate, I'm a blackhole of introversion. Not always good at sharing, or comfortable doing it. I don't even know what would be my equivalent of Jessie's vaginal discharge story, but I'm pretty sure I'd never tell it. I can't really talk about work either, because despite the fact that I'm a mere lowly factotum, I could still - very, very easily - be fired for disclosing just about anything that happens to go on there.
My personal life is largely out of bounds as well. While I could change the names to protect the guilty - mostly myself - everyone in Toronto knows everybody else. I doubt anyone would be really impressed or fooled if I tried something like that, and I don't think it would be too classy of me to try. I guess I could start a super-secret blog that no one else knew about where I could write about my feelings and relationships, but that seems heart-stoppingly lame. It sort of captures the heart of the contradiction. I'd like everyone to read this, and while I realize that one of the rules of blogging is to never talk about what you read on someone else's blog - I have no idea why - I also want the privacy to say exactly what I think. I know that's what journals are for, but wasn't the entire point of blogging to have a journal everyone could read? Or am I just missing the point again?
This all ties into something that's been eating at me lately; whether or not I'm actually that much of a writer. I don't mean that I need reassurance that I'm a "good" writer, I'm pretty sure that I know by now what my strengths and weaknesses are. It's just that I'm beginning to wonder if being a writer is something I really have a calling for. I've been mistaken about creative callings in the past - I actually wanted to be a philosophy professor at one point - and sometimes I wonder if this might not be another example. Put plainly, writing is just a job, like being a tailor or a garbage man. I am militantly opposed to the concept of the writer as the revolutionary vanguard of human consciousness. I consider that to be largely a romantic hangover, but I know that part of the reason why I'm so opposed to it now is because it's something I used to fervently believe when I was but a pretentious, wayward youth.
As a pretentious, wayward young man I've learned better. Now I just think it's something people do because they're good at it. What exactly is writing for? In a letter to a friend, Flannery O'Connor said the question never really occurred to her until she was three quarters finished her masters in English. She went on to say that she she was pretty sure that there were people with PhD's who taught English in universities to whom that question never occurred - not because she thought she was particularly more insightful than them - simply because it occurred to her by accident. I know a question like that would have never occurred to me had a writer like O'Connor not asked it.
Of course, I have no idea what the answer is. I don't like letting go of the idea of myself as a writer. Writing, in some shape or another has become an integral part of my identity. It's how I think of myself when I think of that one creative thing I do. Can't sing, can't dance, can't act. But I say to myself at least you can write! But I don't. At least not very often. I'm not sure if it's because I lack the imagination or the desire, but sometimes I feel like it has to be something big. If I'm not a writer, then I'm not quite sure what I can replace it with. Some days I feel I should just resign myself to the fact that I'm meant to be a consumer of culture, but never a producer.
I know the easy answer to all of this is that I should just keep writing. But I haven't really written anything-anything I would really consider writing-in several months. I've never published anything, period. It seems that I mostly just use writing as some sort of therapeutic aid for private trauma, usually me morbidly over-reacting to something.
So what's my point? I'm wondering the same thing. I guess it's just that recently I've been feeling that "Had potential" is going to be the epitaph they carve on my tombstone.
The first problem is that I'm a little introverted. To be a little more accurate, I'm a blackhole of introversion. Not always good at sharing, or comfortable doing it. I don't even know what would be my equivalent of Jessie's vaginal discharge story, but I'm pretty sure I'd never tell it. I can't really talk about work either, because despite the fact that I'm a mere lowly factotum, I could still - very, very easily - be fired for disclosing just about anything that happens to go on there.
My personal life is largely out of bounds as well. While I could change the names to protect the guilty - mostly myself - everyone in Toronto knows everybody else. I doubt anyone would be really impressed or fooled if I tried something like that, and I don't think it would be too classy of me to try. I guess I could start a super-secret blog that no one else knew about where I could write about my feelings and relationships, but that seems heart-stoppingly lame. It sort of captures the heart of the contradiction. I'd like everyone to read this, and while I realize that one of the rules of blogging is to never talk about what you read on someone else's blog - I have no idea why - I also want the privacy to say exactly what I think. I know that's what journals are for, but wasn't the entire point of blogging to have a journal everyone could read? Or am I just missing the point again?
This all ties into something that's been eating at me lately; whether or not I'm actually that much of a writer. I don't mean that I need reassurance that I'm a "good" writer, I'm pretty sure that I know by now what my strengths and weaknesses are. It's just that I'm beginning to wonder if being a writer is something I really have a calling for. I've been mistaken about creative callings in the past - I actually wanted to be a philosophy professor at one point - and sometimes I wonder if this might not be another example. Put plainly, writing is just a job, like being a tailor or a garbage man. I am militantly opposed to the concept of the writer as the revolutionary vanguard of human consciousness. I consider that to be largely a romantic hangover, but I know that part of the reason why I'm so opposed to it now is because it's something I used to fervently believe when I was but a pretentious, wayward youth.
As a pretentious, wayward young man I've learned better. Now I just think it's something people do because they're good at it. What exactly is writing for? In a letter to a friend, Flannery O'Connor said the question never really occurred to her until she was three quarters finished her masters in English. She went on to say that she she was pretty sure that there were people with PhD's who taught English in universities to whom that question never occurred - not because she thought she was particularly more insightful than them - simply because it occurred to her by accident. I know a question like that would have never occurred to me had a writer like O'Connor not asked it.
Of course, I have no idea what the answer is. I don't like letting go of the idea of myself as a writer. Writing, in some shape or another has become an integral part of my identity. It's how I think of myself when I think of that one creative thing I do. Can't sing, can't dance, can't act. But I say to myself at least you can write! But I don't. At least not very often. I'm not sure if it's because I lack the imagination or the desire, but sometimes I feel like it has to be something big. If I'm not a writer, then I'm not quite sure what I can replace it with. Some days I feel I should just resign myself to the fact that I'm meant to be a consumer of culture, but never a producer.
I know the easy answer to all of this is that I should just keep writing. But I haven't really written anything-anything I would really consider writing-in several months. I've never published anything, period. It seems that I mostly just use writing as some sort of therapeutic aid for private trauma, usually me morbidly over-reacting to something.
So what's my point? I'm wondering the same thing. I guess it's just that recently I've been feeling that "Had potential" is going to be the epitaph they carve on my tombstone.
posted by Sam at
4:32 PM
8 Comments:
but... blogging is writing!
By
j, At
9:40 PM
Meh. Blogging is writing without standards, which is why it's so appealing to people like me who have a problem with being honest, and people like Sam who have a problem with being judged. In the end, Sam, no matter how you dress it up, you write because it's more painful not to write than to write. Blogging is the safest way to do so, which is why it's so compulsive but also why it gets so sterile and boring so quickly. So... how are you going to raise the stakes?
PS I don't think there's anything implausible about you being a philosophy professor, except that a lot of philosophy professors are self-aggrandizing cunts.
By
Susannah, At
9:47 AM
J:
Is it really? It just seems - to me - sometimes to be psychic vomiting. I feel bored, or irritated or mildly upset about my non-problems, and I write them here. Sometimes. I mean, how does that make me any different from a fourteen year old girl? BTW, I'm just talking about my blog here. I like reading yours.
By
Sam, At
4:39 PM
Susannah:
Having problems being honest and having problems being judged ultimately wind up being the same thing. Everything that descends coverges too.
My problem with all of this is that it seems self-defeating. You would think that the entire purpose of writing in these blogs should be - like all writing should be - to produce something that people would want to read. It's completely the opposite. The only capacity blogging really seems to exercise is my capacity for self censorship. That's like asking a chimp to practice eating more bananas.
P.S That raises the question: Are self-aggrandizing cunts drawn to being philosophy professors, or does the mere process of becoming one nurture those latent tendencies?
By
Sam, At
5:08 PM
Chicken and the egg, misery and pop songs...
You can make your blog whatever you want it to be. Initially mine was a way of avoiding the ever-annoying mass emails, but it quickly became a writing excercise. I don't just dash something off and post it; I walk away from the computer, come back, tighten, and then post. I mean, I don't spend the hours on it that I would something I was showing a prof, or sending to a magazine, but it's good practice. There have been times where it has decended into psychic vomiting, and, more often than not, it's a form of procrastination, but it's also a form of procrastination that involves structuing something, pacing something.
And, look, who the fuck cares if you haven't been published? Don't think about publishing for right now. Just set aside a few hours each week and plant yourself in front of your computer, take out your internet cord, and open a word doc.
I'm not entirely sure I agree that all writing should lead to something people want to read, but, I think I just knee-jerk whenever I hear 'writing should lead to x.' Unless x = chocolately goodness.
Also, don't dis fourteen-year-old girls! We've all been fourteen-year-old girls at some point in our lives...
By
j, At
8:34 PM
Some days writing my blog is as satisfying as picking a scab, or indeed vomiting after prolonged nausea. Other days I look at it and hate myself for being so insincere. Blogging definitely has limiting tendencies, especially when everyone applauds you for being cute and funny and your efforts at honesty and rigor are met only with a deafening silence.
I understand completely what you mean about self-censorship. Blogs can become masterpieces of self-censorship, partly because they turn into your public face -- only it's a public face whose expression you can micro-manipulate and which never blushes. I like it when people tell me they enjoy my blog, but it's not the same as real writing and I know it. In some ways, blogging is just another bad habit. But at least it keeps me writing, and occasionally keeps me from straying too far into personal prejudice lest I look like a complete jerk.
Anyway, to paraphrase Lucky Jim, why beat yourself up whether you're a writer, and what is a writer anyway? I think you know the itch isn't going to leave you alone, and equally I think you know what it wants you to do. It wants you to sit down and write what has to be written. You can worry about who's going to read it later, if at all. But please, whatever you do, do not enroll in a Creative Writing MFA course.
PS I have no answer to the professorship-or-cunt conundrum.
By
Susannah, At
2:59 AM
Susannah:
In defence of the MFA, I do know one exceptionally talented person who's taking one.
By
Sam, At
3:26 PM
Wow! Sorry I'm late to this party, but you guys are so serious! Blogging involves words; ergo, it is writing. And of course you are supposed to talk about what you write on your blog in the real world! Who said there was any prohibition against that? And don't dis personal revelations ("psychic vomiting")- because they can be as important and interesting to other people as they are to you, as long as you keep the fact that you are writing for other people in your head. I've had a few people say they actually liked my most recent posts on my personal blog, for instance.
I agree with J - you can make a blog as professional or unprofessional as you want. I'm slowly trying to get to a level of professionalism by trying out new things and learning what works and doesn't work for me.
As for worrying about whether you are a writer or not: this shouldn't seriously be a concern. Sometimes writers think so highly of "writing" as an ideal they start to think they aren't worthy of it (I've done it in the past). Writing is a human activity like sleeping, eating, sex and farting, and should be done whenever we want to do it, and whenever it is not dangerous or bothersome for other people if we do it.
By
Anonymous, At
10:00 AM
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