When people hear that I like writing, two reactions are the most common. The first is, What? How? I hate writing! or, Yeah, me too. There is no between. People get more appalled when I tell them about how it easy it comes to me.
Which, to be fair, isn’t entirely accurate. Writing is easy for me, as long as it’s not creative. Writing an essay for a class? Easy, depending on how long the essay is required to be. 1-2 hours tops, depending on how much I like what I’m writing about. Writing essays might be easier for me because it’s not creative and I’m not coming up with new ideas. Words flow out of me and my fingers move almost as fast as my mind does. My friends – and others – watch as I type essays, fascinated that I can get through the subject so quickly.
Creative writing is an entirely different story. Even now, as I’m typing this, I have several half-finished little stories I’ve written that will probably never see the light of day. Some of them only have a page, while others have close to 10 pages as I struggle to figure out where I want my characters to go and what I want them to do.
Let me clarify that the reason these will never see the light of day is not because I do not think that they are good – though that is debatable – but because I run out of inspiration. An idea sounds fantastic and I begin to write it – and as soon as I do, the idea is lost.
To be completely honest, I’m not sure how to finish this. I mostly wrote this because I had free time this past weekend and wanted to write creatively but instead got incredibly frustrated at my own inability to write words and sentences that I was happy with.I assume the moral of the story is that if you’re a writer, an artist, or anything else that requires creative thought, my thoughts are with you. It’s an incredibly difficult and intricate process that can be both very rewarding and fun when one is up to it.
So, to all the writers, artists, or creative people, keep fighting the good fight and I’m rooting for you.