Patchwork

Hello there, reader! I've been trying to write a post for several days now, but for some reason I found myself facing a bad case of blogger's block (that sounds weird, doesn't it). So I went back into my old posts looking for inspiration, and I began reading all of the ones I started but never finished. Of the 106 posts I've started, only a slight majority were actually published. Though it feels like somewhat of a cop-out to my writer brain, I thought I'd share a few excerpts with you today- out of context and only loosely stitched together.

7/23/13
Stories exist to help us make sense of this jumbled mess we call life. Often I've found myself wishing that life was more like a novel. That I could track my progress like a character arc, and that there would be one defining moment in which everything would miraculously become clear, and I would understand the reason for the challenges and suffering that I had to face in order to get there. But in life, there is no "reason" except to live. Every plateau of self-realization is only temporary before we begin the climb to the next climax, facing new hardships along the way. Each life is a collection of hundreds and hundreds of rising and falling action. We are essentially made up of stories.

7/16/13
From my notebook on May 29, 2013- 5:45 pm: We've been in New York for about four hours now, and if this city does not make you aware of your own insignificance I don't know what else will. From the air it almost doesn't look real- like a toy city or a landscape out of a dystopian novel. Or rather, it looks like you have always seen New York, from the air in movies with the narration of some unknown character coming at you from the television. It is always one voice, one out of so many millions, because it is impossible to listen to everyone's voice at once. In the city of a thousand stories, we only hear one at a time. 

If that is New York from the air, then New York from the ground is the opposite. There are no pristine helicopter shots here, no toy buildings with toy cars. New York from the ground is like being dropped into a jungle. Everything is gritty, tangible, unmistakably real. It's as if the chaos is singing to its own tune, and you have to find the melody and hum along.

4/17/13

I want you to think about a person that you trust. I mean the kind of person you would hoist up onto a ledge to get away from zombies, knowing they they would turn around to help you up, too. Trust is a form of respect. It's saying, I respect you enough to know, with every fiber of my being, that you''ll always tell me the truth. I'm asking you to extend that trust to yourself and your creative endeavors. That doesn't mean that suddenly you will think all of your ideas are perfect, or that that twinge of self doubt will go away. It won't. But you'll know when it's grounded in reality and when it's not. We trust people because they tell us the truth, and you should trust yourself enough to know when an idea isn't working. The important part is that you trust yourself enough to try, even when you are unsure about something. A little uncertainty is natural. Doubt to the point of not going through with it is self destructive.

11/20/12

This was inspired by this post on my friend's blog.

You know what I would love to do? I would love to finally write a novel. I would love for college essays to flow seamlessly from my head onto the page. I want to travel to Ireland and I want to meet interesting people. I want to go to a social event where the person I'm with is not constantly checking their phone. I want to live in a city where people don't mind walking places and where trains are cool again. I wish I could be one of those people who writes obsessively in notebooks and isn't afraid to do sketches and water color paintings in the margins. That, and I want to have a drawing style, so that when people look over my shoulder at some random doodle they will say, "Ooh. That's really good. I like your style!" I want to go to a concert. I'll buy a t-shirt there and wear it to school the next day. I want to express my love of Sherlock and Nerfighteria to everyone I meet, but I'm afraid to for reasons I don't completely understand. I want to meet someone who's read the same books I have. I wonder if we all have a book twin. Maybe there's someone out there who's read the same books as us and we don't even know it, like those twins that were separated at birth but both built benches around trees in their front yard. I want to work at an indie book store somewhere. Or, in the next best scenario, be a "regular" at one. 

I want to have a writing retreat that I can go to whenever I feel like it. Maybe a lake house or a table at a local coffee shop or office space in an abandoned artist's studio or a garage apartment. I'd have a big wooden desk and bookshelves lining the walls and an obscene amount of rugs on the floor.  Better yet, make it an attic studio in Paris or a stone castle in Ireland. Maybe I'll end up in an artists commune out in the dessert and we'll all live in Airstreams and type on antique typewriters while the mountains turn purple behind our heads. Someday, I'll get a brilliant idea while riding on a train.

I hope you enjoyed this little trip through my past! Also before I go, a quick update:

1. I didn't hit 50,000 words during Camp Nanowrimo, but I wrote 16,000 words during the first two and a half weeks before life took over. It was a great experience and one I'd definitely like to try again.
2. I leave for college in just a little over a week! I don't know how much time I will have to blog, but I'm going to do my best!
3. You can now sign up to receive e-mail updates when I make a new post! (Considering the erratic nature of my postings, this could come in very handy ;) Just enter your e-mail address into the box in the top left hand corner of this page.

As always, thank you so much for reading! If you have thoughts on any of the scattered postings above, don't hesitate to leave a comment.