Posts tagged with "writing"

The Return (Hiatus 1: Octave)

We move in cir­cles
Balanced all the while
On a gleam­ing razor’s edge

A per­fect sphere
Colliding with our fate
This sto­ry ends where it began

—Dream Theater, Octavarium

Back to this.

So much has passed, yet noth­ing seems to have changed. I’ve nev­er gone this long with­out writ­ing an entry. For a while there, I did­n’t mind. Didn’t mind not forc­ing myself to sit and write at every free moment. Didn’t mind my life not being tak­en over by this.

Now it feels like I’m in the mid­dle of a tran­si­tion. So much is hap­pen­ing around me, with so much to do, while my emo­tions remain neu­tral as if I don’t know what to think. There’s has­n’t been enough sta­bil­i­ty yet, or per­haps I haven’t been able to sit down to write and think about what’s going on. I’m ready now.

It’s been 33 days.

I def­i­nite­ly missed this.

The Next Level, Part 2

It’s get­ting eas­i­er to write again. Ideas are com­ing a lit­tle more flu­id­ly, and aren’t quite as strain­ing to devel­op any­more. Perhaps there’s been an excess of inspi­ra­tion in the last while, from the music that keeps me mov­ing, to the peo­ple I inter­act with, to the tem­per­a­ture of the sea­son, to the words in the books that I’ve been read­ing with rel­ish.

Life is a series of sen­sa­tions that gal­va­nize, encour­age, pro­voke, and teach.

I can nev­er seem to get it all down.

Switching Books

Over the week­end, with the cozy com­fort of my duvet, I fin­ished read­ing the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. The sto­ry took me by sur­prise. I had no pri­or knowl­edge of the plot, char­ac­ters, or themes, so I had the lux­u­ry of read­ing with­out the taint of anoth­er opin­ion. Even as a teenag­er, Duddy has the ambi­tion to pur­sue his dream of own­ing a huge plot of land before he’s even legal­ly allowed to own it, but he los­es his human­i­ty in the process. It was a fair­ly gal­va­niz­ing sto­ry, some­thing I’m not sure I could say if I knew more about the book before read­ing it. It’s his dri­ve, his ini­tia­tive that I admire.

Yesterday, I start­ed The Republic of Love (on the rec­om­men­da­tion of Karen) by Carol Shields. Even though I’m only through the first chap­ter, I can already tell that Shields knows what she’s talk­ing about. She knows how rela­tion­ships dis­in­te­grate, knows how peo­ple think, knows how our dai­ly lives are a reflec­tion of the moods we have and mind­sets we wear. I’m remind­ed of Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese philoso­pher and author of The Prophet who wrote as if he under­stood love and the spir­it on a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent lev­el. Even though he nev­er met the love of his life face-to-face (they knew each oth­er through pub­li­ca­tions), their col­lec­tion of love let­ters shows an under­stand­ing and har­mo­ny deep­er than any oth­er two peo­ple I can think of.

It always makes me won­der: how much of an author’s writ­ing is from expe­ri­ence and how much is from imag­i­na­tion? The details, sub­tleties, thor­ough­ness of the char­ac­ters they devel­op, expressed in the inge­nu­ity of the words they use must be from more than mere under­stand­ing. Would Frost have been able to write his rur­al poet­ry with­out mov­ing to New Hampshire, spend­ing his time there as a cob­bler, farmer, and teacher? Would Irving have been able to write from the per­spec­tive of a teacher at Bishop Strachan, with­out first watch­ing the girls in their plaid skirts being picked up by their wealthy par­ents? Even in the pref­ace to A Hero Of Our Time, Lermontov admits, “oth­ers del­i­cate­ly hint­ed that the author had drawn por­traits of him­self and his acquain­tances” and brush­es this off as a “thread­bare wit­ti­cism”, but could he real­ly have cre­at­ed such an amoral anti-hero with­out a lump of burn­ing indif­fer­ence in his chest?

Getting Easier To Write Again

It’s not that I haven’t had time to write late­ly, it’s that every time I sit down and set myself on writ­ing, I can’t fol­low through on any of my ideas. I blame the close prox­im­i­ty of my house to my job. For years, going to uni­ver­si­ty and going to work on the bus would force me to sit pas­sive­ly, while some­one would take me to my des­ti­na­tion. I did­n’t have to think about any­thing, so my mind would drift about ran­dom things, like my friends, my rela­tion­ships, and my life. Back then, my entries were thor­ough and bet­ter devel­oped.

It’s slow­ly get­ting eas­i­er to write again. I don’t have to force myself as much.

Weightless Notebook

I’m at the point now where I don’t need to car­ry around a note­book to keep track of the sub­jects and ideas I want to write about lat­er. There are so many things to say that I only end up remem­ber­ing the impor­tant ones any­way. It’s like a sub­con­scious way of fil­ter­ing out the things that aren’t worth men­tion­ing.

A good feel­ing. As if life nev­er ceas­es to be inter­est­ing, and there’s always some­thing to expe­ri­ence, to learn, and to tell.