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I’ll blog here until I’m ready to blog. Because right now, my thoughts are fragmented, broken up, and heaped into a messy pile in my head.  Even coherent sentences are a challenge.

My professor said during last class (I mean the last one I attended-because I missed a few) that every great writer should find his or her breath. We were discussing how to condense and expand ideas in order to make a better essay. He mentioned that every writer has a length at which they write best. 

If you’re a good novelist, you’ve figured out the art of long-windedness. You know how to reel someone in with fantastic prose, hold them hostage with rising and falling tension, and release them only when you’ve dragged out the entirety of your elaborate plot. You’re subtle about this, though, which is why you’re effective.

I think the same strategy is utilized by the writer of the short story and essay, but on a smaller scale. Less flower, less room for a misstep. I like this kind of writing best, although it’s been a challenge lately, as I’ve mentioned. But I’ll return to this. 

Some writers, in contrast to those mentioned, abandon the idea of the five traditional “elements of a story” in search for somewhere they can hammer out information, voice opinions speedily, or sell ideas. These writers express thoughts with such certitude, the reader might not be able to handle more than four paragraphs. And this suits the writer, who probably turns to journalism or news writing.  This is how I learned to write in my other major, public relations. If you know the language of short attention span, they told me, it increases your chances of getting hired in the same way being bilingual might. Maybe this is why I was so good at this language, because I was ADD’s poster child.

 When I was writing by the AP style book (that’s the bible of journalists), I knew everything. And everyone- in my target market- wanted to listen. I was confident, direct, and always right. If I wasn’t, you wouldn’t know it. I got the highest grade in my news writing class and my public speaking class. I knew how to bullshit. I was in the business of selling, whether that meant a product launch, a press release, or a catchy tagline. It seemed easy and, I think, made my writing something I was confident in. But this was all good until it wasn’t. And now, upon returning to school after a hiatus, I’m bored of it. I don’t really want to sell anything and I definitely don’t want to bullshit, if that’s possible to avoid. 

So I decided to do what I originally intended when I accepted a creative writing scholarship and chose FSU. This was writing creatively, about what I saw and heard. Because there is a lot that some people miss. It is up to the creative writer, the thinker, to catch it and jot it down. It’s up to the person who sees a lot, to get it on the page, turn it into something beautiful, didactic, or encouraging.

Before I got spooked by the economy into the school of communications, I wrote like this.

Now, after a year when I have seen more, learned more, journaled more than I ever have. When I have thought deeply, too deeply at times, about life. The thought of returning to these experiences and observations seems frightening. I don’t feel my words carry the emphasis they used to, and lately I don’t feel I’ve found any breath beyond 140 characters or fragmented status updates. 

No, even then I’d rather borrow from others. It’s easier to quote and re-tweet. It’s sharing. It’s the act of becoming the medium by which the agenda of others is carried out. Right now, I am the air upon which the bubble of ideas drifts, but believe me, someone else’s lips shaped it. 

This is not a matter of lacking the ability to turn material into essays or stories. Quite the opposite. It’s how I suppose it feels when you are overwhelmed, and you would rather not write. You would rather just scream. Yell obscenities. And if you can’t do this because people are watching, then you just stay silent, watch a comedy, go mad.  

I realize my ideas are drowning each other, and I’m running out of air trying to save them. So I make lists and brainstorm. These lists of ideas for topics, or memories, or songs that make me want to write. Oftentimes this resembles the back of an album cover. I have lots of titles. But no songs yet. Scattered lyrics, but no music.

But they are there, waiting—all of these ideas, piled in my head, waiting to be painfully extracted.

vastandgrand:

“The Breeze/My Baby Cries” by Bill Callahan from Loving Takes This Course

(via newspeedwayboogie)

(Source: phamv)

Can I go here

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psmadison:

I love the bold colors and patterns!

love

(Source: quirkyetiquette)

everydayrainbows:

-ryan gosling, you always hurt the ones you love

thatkindofwoman

Need to see this movie

(Source: vanskiezoner, via mybluecanoe)

charlotteromance:

via Habitually Chic

Sometimes second chances come in ways you could never have conjured. Like little girls whose imaginations are not tainted by the stains of malicious words that would dampen dreams. Little girls whose hearts are young and full of hope, having not been shattered by heartbreak or embittered by jealousy. Little girls who look up to you and see you as the beautiful, smart, and brave girl you long to be. Your past mistakes are not so evident to them. They see in you…that same innocence that you see in their 5 and 9 year old smiles. And that is a second chance indeed.