It’s been a stupidly long time since my last post. I don’t really have an excuse- other than a ten day trip to Bali, starting University (which means hours and hours of reading like a total maniac) and job hunting. I don’t want to let this blog slip away though, so I will endeavour from now on to put something up every couple of days, even if it’s just an inspiring quote or picture!
I’ve just finished one of my text books for Uni. It’s called The Little Red Writing Book and it’s essentially a beautifully stylish, concise writing handbook. It’s got me to thinking about the way I write, why I write, why I choose words, why I omit sentences, why I’m petrified for others to read my work. In other words, I suppose, it’s had a pretty profound effect on the way that I think.
Call it what you will, the particular brand of ‘creative investigative journalism’ I choose to employ should be considered more of a preoccupied fascination with my surroundings. You already know I’m obsessed with colours, and lights and sounds and smells, and of course, all the wonderful weirdos who embellish the bizarre tapestry that is my own glorious Mess.
There may be others that would consider it more merely as a collection of muddled-up musings from a nerd with a minor inferiority complex... but, I digress.
Ever since I was small, I have been enthralled by words. A single word can inspire stupendous reflection in the mind. Rainbow. Glory. Insignificant. Lavender. Whale. Bland. Taj Mahal. Do you see what I mean? Describing words, names of things, names of people. I’ll take the lot. And people! Oh, people ... watching people, talking to people, listening to people talk to people. Laughing at people, laughing with people, dancing with people, watching other people dance, watching people cry and fight and walk and walk into things.
Cause and consequence, action and reaction. What a wildly erratic world we live in! I consider it to be a great privilege, having such a childish preoccupation with life, to sit and observe this wondrous phenomenon that is Mess. What I hope to be able to do (not only in the three microscopically small years I have at University, but over the course of a lifetime, or several, if I can swing it), is to be able to write about it. Clearly. Concisely. With colour and vigour and clarity.
"Why do you want to write?" a stuffy bean-pole of a man asked me once on a plane. "Because I have to," I answered plaintively.
To quote a man who is fast becoming one of my favourite authors in the universe, Mark Tredinnick: "A writer writes because he must: it's an addiction; it's an affliction; it's a profound affection." That is a far more eloquent and beautiful turn-of-phrase than my clumsy attempt (-"Because I have to"- idiot). But what Mark is getting at is true. I write because I have no other choice. There are few other outlets, few other places to channel excess energy. My head is too full of thoughts and imagery and noise to have it contained in the few square inches of space inside my skull.
What’s more- another idea from Mark’s wonderful book- is that writing is really just thinking on paper. Writing allows you to put everything you think down on paper, but is gracious enough to allow a level of filtering that enables only the most pure form of thought to be recorded. (If that’s what you choose to do. You could just leave a plethora of crap there if you wanted to. Ever read ‘War and Peace’?).
My best friend calls me a romantic at least twice a week. I’m happy to wear that- at least I know that I am slowly becoming a product of my own experiences. But I think that I’m slowly coming to use another term to describe myself. I’m a writer.
I write.
I’m a writer.
