Why write?

Why did I start this blog? Why do I want to spend my free time writing? Because we all need some sort of artistic outlet. I'm totally jealous of the severely artistic. That sounds terrible, but you know what I mean, people who dive into their artistic endeavors, are good at it, and know that they are good at it. I want to feel that way.

I've bounced around between different mediums. You've seen my sketches, they're pretty childish (although who doesn't love the occasional personified vagina, right?). I've tried getting more into music too, but despite the fact I've played cello since I was a kid, I have no ear for writing music. Last summer I wrote and recorded a song (alone, on my computer). It's terrible. Imagine an auto-tuned duck warbling out bad rhymes about Las Vegas and you'll have a good idea of what it is like. (You'll know I'm really desperate for a laugh if I ever share *that* with you.)

But even if I kind of give up on drawing and music, I'll never give up on writing. I love to write. I've loved to write since I was a little kid. My writing has taken on many different forms as I've gone through different phases in my life. Short stories, poetry, fanfic, journaling.  I discovered fanfic as a young teen and fell in love with it for a long time. I wrote so much fanfic... Star Wars, X-Files, Star Trek, Kenshin, Stargate.... And it's fun, but fanfic writing is like writing with a big crutch because you already have all this marvelous backstory and deep character history to draw from without any effort on your part. So now when I try to write fiction of my own, I get stuck on having to make all that up from scratch. And I guess I just don't have enough self-confidence, because I end up I hating my characters or second guessing my plot the whole time, then eventually I give up.

If you click on this picture you can actually read my
first electronic journal entry from November, 1996

But I am good at journaling. Or, at least, I'm persistant. (can you even be good at journaling? is blathering on and on about yourself really a skill?) I started keeping an electronic journal backing in 1996, on an old floppy disc on the family IBM computer. In 1999 I saved up and bought my own computer and journaled there (sadly most of those journal entries seem to be lost). Then in 2003 I discovered LiveJournal and have been using that ever since.

Then I recently read The Bloggess's book Let's Pretend This Never Happened and I just lost my shit over how impressed I was. And that inspired me. Inspired me to take some of what I know about writing and channel some of my journaling energy into it to make a blog.

So I guess in a way this whole blog is my latest feeble attempt at the arts. I'm going to try not to let the voice in my head talk me out of continuing to do it. So far it's been incredibly cathartic and... fun. I really appreciate every bit of positive feedback I've received even just knowing that some people have read one post and come back for another helps me keep going.