An Embarrassingly Journalistic entry; Not Compelling but Revealing

I'm looking into this.

I've long thought that one needs to have survived adequate trials and problems in order to become a writer, in order to have a story to tell.  My story is that I am crazy.  I laid in bed awake for God knows how long last night, allowing my measly career as a writer/English major to flash before me.  I have the uncanny ability to recall from memory almost every single poem I have written.  I would think that most writers can do this, as the words are tinkered around with to such a degree that they're permanently burned in the mind.  There is always room for improvement when it comes to writing.  Emily Culella was in a startling amount of memories, and I realized that she really pushed me to become a better writer, from pointing out in poetry workshop that my Sestina for Tennis Players is one big cliché, to sitting with me in the hallway while I deliberated the usage of a comma in a terrible poem she was overseeing the publication of in the lit magazine our sophomore year.  The poem didn't make it to publication, and I actually wish the one that did make it hadn't, either.  It appeared first in the poetry section.  I'm not sure why.  How embarrassing it is to grow so much in two years, and have that growth forever documented, a sharp disparity between my terrible, abstract, desperate poem sophomore year to my stronger, image-based poems senior year.  Like winning the Most Improved Award.  I won it in softball and Highsteppers.  It's really an award just to say, "you tried really hard, but you still really suck."

I want to be a writer.  This weekend I realized that if I don't write, I won't be a writer.  It's pretty simple in reality, but for a perfectionist like me, it's the tallest order in the world.

Forever my inspiration, I watched Sylvia on Saturday, when I was enjoying a brief bout of sanity, and recalled my first sonnet, "Sonnet: To Sylvia," which used her first sonnet, "Sonnet: To Spring" as a sounding board.  I published it in the lit magazine my senior year.

Sonnet: To Sylvia

I wore my hair in curls like yours one week
and hoped to coil genius in each strand,
but inspiration failed to stir in me,
and buzzing plastic rollers singed my hands.

When petals from my tulips fell I pressed
them gently in my dictionary to
the words from your first sonnet I thought best:
magenta stains "beguile" and "delude."

You tricked me with your subtle words and rhyme,
procured from life before it drove you mad.
Although your chosen major echoes mine,
I just can't grasp that passion that you had.

Again I was ambitious and assumed
That maybe I could write as well as you.

---

Recalled entirely from memory.  And not as good as it could be.  The reason I've always seen so much of myself in Sylvia Plath is 1. Because I am a clichéd, middle-class English major at heart and 2. Because neither of us had topics for writing, aside from our own mental illnesses.  We lead privileged lives, we jump on the many opportunities offered to us, we are always looking for something better, a way to get this burgeoning need to express ourselves Out There.  We put ourselves through insanity in order to have a topic for writing in lieu of other, more Poe-ish topics.  Perhaps it isn't that writers have experienced life deeply and intensely, tragically and mournfully, it's that writers find a way to lead such a life, by whatever means possible.

The lowest point in my writing career is now.

I wish I knew nicer people.

P.S. This is, of course, not to say that those who have been heartily encouraging me are mean people.  You are very nice people.  I wish I knew more of you.  Or just fewer of the mean sort.  Or had thicker skin.  So thank you.  Your encouragement means so much.

I want to quit my writer dream.  Turns out it is possible to be underqualified as a writer, and I am.

Everyday I feel as though I'm wasting time.  That I'm years behind schedule.  And I'm only 22.

I am a wannabe writer without a venue, idea, or genre.  Without a publishing house, without a mentor, without an MFA.  With friends closer than I am to realizing my dream.

In case anyone was confused, tons of adjectives and adverbs do not, by any means, equal good writing.  Sorry.

The secret's in the similes.

I'm always baffled by butterflies who are able to flutter near my window, on the eighth floor of my office building, as if they're supermen.

I own an iPod.  An iPod nano.  Yes, I am very trendy.  No, actually, the fact that most of my very favorite songs and CDs and playlists can fit into one tiny piece of machinery constantly blows my mind.  Whenever I'm afraid I'm becoming too cynical I can pick up my iPod and say "wow," and really mean it.  I was that girl who used to lug her entire 200-disc CD collection around on trips, along with her CD player.  And the batteries inevitably ran out about 1/4 of the way through the trip and I'd end up listening to only two or three CDs, spending the rest of the time terrified that my CD collection would be stolen.  The iPod nano has changed my life, in a way.

The thing is, I'm not suited to listen to it at all times.
1. I'm a very anxious person.  I have to know what's going on all around me at all times or I become sure I'm somehow involved in the next suicide bombing. 
2. The earbuds are way too big for my ears.  I have to get new ones. and
3. A writer's job is to pay close attention to the world and then write about it in retrospect.  There is only so much attention one can pay when the world is directly shut out via an iPod.  Yes, this comes in handy sometimes, such as the first few hours every workday morning when I refuse to take orders from anyone.  However, there may be a reason writers are generally poor.  If they are poor, they cannot afford the newest technology and are instead forced into the organic world more often than others.  They must retreat from the world only to write, and even then a non-electric typewriter alone is suitable to get the job done.  Every real writer owns an old typewriter.  Not really, but sometimes I like to find ways to validate my dream.

That said, I'm keeping my nano.  What does this mean for me as a potential writer?

I think it means I absolutely do not belong in advertising.