I ADORE WRITING
THERE ARE SO MANY REASONS
When I write poetry, it’s a burst of emotional purging. An intense detox of my psyche. True self-therapy. *Free* therapy sessions. It’s a vital means of maintaining my sanity.
When I write my novellas, it’s so wildly different from writing poetry. The best I way I can describe the difference is as follows:
Poetry is a butterfly that is within reach one moment and is suddenly out of my grasp the next and if I don’t dive quickly, it’s gone. I can run, strain, and jump as much as I’d like, but it will be gone forever. The emotions come and go and change shades and depth in an instant. But once I capture that fleeting, fragile moment, it brings such satisfaction and a release. I can find calm even when things are awful.
Story writing is watching a swan float down a river from a hilltop. I have a view of it coming, I can see where it may go. If I take control, I may even be able to change its course. Or more specifically, I can create the swan, make it speak, make it flightless, or transform it into a fire-breathing dragon that can conquer all evil on Earth. Story writing is most truly the only time in my life when I am 100% in control of something. It’s one of the most glorious feelings of power and freedom I’ve ever experienced.
Naturally, it would be nice to have regular doses of therapy, control, and freedom. But this brings me back to my point. I’ve been lacking the focus, due to what I mentioned in my last post. I love speaking lots of different languages and I want to speak soooo many. Too many. Besides the languages I’ve already learned and try to maintain, I am trying to learn Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, and Turkish. I’ll get into all my reasons for my interests in each one in a future post. But what both of these passions have in common is that they require a HUGE amount of mental energy. Granted, they’re really different types of mental energy, but energy is energy and I often don’t have enough.
So, I’m taking the advice of one of my new English students and I’m going to try to spend just a few minutes as often as I can to write something. Even if it’s not five pages. Even if it’s only one sentence. I think it will free up the rest of my mind for the languages.
However, this brings me to the other perceived obstacle which I’ll save for my next post.
