Sleeping At The Sunrise

The last assignment for my feature writing class this semester was a memoir. This is what came out. I turn in the final copy tomorrow. Let me know what you think.

I have this paralyzing issue where I like to call myself a writer, but six and a half days out of seven, I can’t write. I can. I don’t. My writing is tied up in academia and tweeting, with very little actual creative endeavors on my part. I used to want to write stories. I wanted to be the wordsmith, the author people would quote when they wanted to speak on life and love and everything in between.

I used to.

When I was in high school, it was easy to tell people I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. Nowadays, people ask me what I want to do when I graduate and I say I have no idea. Because I don’t know if I’m capable of being a writer. Not a significant one, anyway. I don’t know if I have the talent or the tenacity for it.

I get told I’m a good writer a lot. I get told I’m a safe writer by actual writers. I’m trying to write in ink, but they want blood and I’ve locked away all the knives that could wound.

Creative writing was always my preferred genre, but it wasn’t until my junior year of college that I was finally able to take a class on narrative in Oxford during my semester abroad. The first assignment my tutor gave me was to expose myself as a writer. From the word go, he asked me for blood, and I struggled to stay in bed, wrapped tight in my safety blanket.

The story I turned in for that first assignment was a copout: I basically turned in my private journal with a narrative structured around it. I made the effort, so my tutor let us move on, but that was the first time anyone had ever asked me to expose myself through my writing.

Fast forward a couple months and I find myself sitting in Dr. Ron’s office, frustrated and fed up with myself. He’s telling me that my writing lacks a voice, that it’s flat and boring, and somehow those are just two characteristics that have come to define me lately.

I’m crying because I’m frustrated so of course I’m crying. I look at my portfolio for feature writing, see Dr. Ron’s comments and notes scribbled all over the paper, and I’m not sure how to fix where I went wrong. Journalism doesn’t come easy to me, and I’m not used to having to struggle. I’ve managed to coast through school my entire life, but now someone is asking me to really do something and I’m coming up short.

I wipe away the tears, nodding along to what Ron is saying, because I know what he’s asking me to do, I just don’t know how to do it. “Writing is easy, you just open a vein and bleed,” he quotes to me. Bleeding’s not easy. Bleeding is the scariest thing a person could ask me to do.

After I leave his office, I go straight to my computer, delete the flat and boring memoir page I showed him at the conference and type up a different page. This one’s covered in red and I almost don’t want to turn it in. But I do.

When I get the page back a few days later, my page of red has a stamp of approval on it. Now I just have to bleed it dry.

Writing is easy. Writing is hard, one of the hardest things I’ve ever attempted to do, next to music. Both these things require a lot of time and dedication. But they require something even bigger than that. They need your soul too.

There are no deals with the devil here. We writers and musicians and artists of all sorts have no soul to give him. We’re putting it all down on the page, bleeding out our hearts for no other reason than that we need to. Because if we didn’t, we would destroy ourselves and each other. That blood is our proof, our flag on the moon, the sign that proclaims our existence.

Sometimes I wonder if I have enough blood to give. If attempting to follow any sort of path that involves writing is a hero’s journey or if it’s a suicide mission. Maybe it’s both.

I struggle with the future. I ask myself, “Do I really want to do this?” on a daily basis. I’ve had this dream for so long that now it just feels old and withered, like it should be let go and I should look for something a little closer to earth, a little more practical, a little less soul dealing.

When the future knocks like a persistent tax collector, it’s hard to pay the fines every time. It’s hard to fork over your dreams and say, “Look. This is what I want. I have goals and plans and a purpose.” It’s hard to be faithful to those dreams. We run scared, and we run fast, usually in the wrong direction.

On the other hand, I never really did like running. 

Let me tell you a story. About being driven home late at night, one hand tied to another, reaching across towards each other, but the mind running far away. Of dreams feeling tired, withered, old, to the point of giving up. To the point of, “Why do I want to do this, really?” This is a story of watching the city blocks turn into highway stretches into suburban yards. This is a story about giving up. This is a story of kicking over the dead coals and relighting the fire. 

When the future knocks like a persistent tax collector, it’s hard to pay the fines every time. It’s hard to fork over your dreams and say, “Look. This is what I want. I have goals and plans and a purpose.” It’s hard to be faithful to those dreams. We run scared, and we run fast, usually in the wrong direction. But sometimes there’s a hand that stops you, that anchors you, that runs with you, not away but towards.

This isn’t a story. There’s a beginning and some of a middle, but the plot needs revision. The characters need motivation and the setting needs to grow. This isn’t a story.

Not yet. 

“What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?”
- John Green, An Abundance of Katherines 

I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot today. It’s always been one of my favorites, but for some reason it’s stuck in my mind right now. It’s the one thing that’s felt right, even through all my various career plan changes, or lack of plans. Okay, I admit, I have no idea what I want to do, specifically. But I know I want to do something remarkable. Something that has an impact, that changes something. Because that’s the point, isn’t it? Being alive isn’t about following a set path, one that thousands of people have walked before you. It’s about blazing a new trail, about doing something that is uniquely yours, no matter how big or small. 

Because fuck boring. Fuck being stuck doing something that doesn’t interest you. Life is too short for that. Why should I have to fall into the same patterns as everyone else, just because that’s how it’s done? That’s normal, that’s safe. I’ve never asked for safety. Stability, sure, that would be nice, but why not have some adventures too? We’re young, we’re alive, so why are we all trying so hard to settle? 

If you know me at all, you know I’m a huge scifi/fantasy nerd. I grew up reading my parents fantasy novels, and then finding my own. The books weren’t always enough though, so I started making up my own stories and adventures. I’d run around in my backyard pretending to be someone else in a different world with a life far more exciting than southern Illinois could ever give me. I’d scribble down notes and plot lines and dialogue when I wanted to remember, forgetting them when I didn’t, because it didn’t matter. There would always be a new adventure for tomorrow. 

As I grew up, I had to face the facts that I wasn’t going to be whisked away to wizarding school, or be given a magical ring that would be the focus of the ultimate war between good and evil. I was never going to run through forests with the elves or travel through time and space with the Doctor. Magic wasn’t real and color only existed in storybooks. 

I still daydream though. I still leave the real world behind to indulge in my fantasies. Maybe the stories don’t come as easily as they used to when I was younger, but they’re still there. When the boredom overwhelms me, when the tediousness of daily life dulls the world around me, I can still find comfort in those stories. Sometimes they make coming back easier. Sometimes it’s harder. 

My point here, I guess, is that so what if magic isn’t real? So what if I’ll never have the same adventures as the characters I love? I am my own character; I want my own adventures. My own story. It’s not a story if all I do is fit into a mold. I’ll be one of the millions who get lost to history, whose name disappears, fades away without a murmur. That’s not living. That’s existing. I’m not here to exist. I’m here to live, to do something remarkable. To prove that I’m alive, that I was a part of this world. 

When you grow up, you have to learn that magic isn’t real. But fuck that. I still believe. I’m going to find it. I’m going to live my own adventure. 

I’m much braver in my daydreams. But I’m tired of being scared. Of being timid. 

“May you have an interesting life” is supposed to be a curse. But I’ll take my chances.

So… What are you going to do with your life?

“You’re not looking for joy. You’re looking for a job. You’re looking for a career.”
-Kevin Carroll Katalyst 

That’s the problem, I think, with college. In this day and age, most of us are in training for jobs that don’t even exist yet. We’re all trying so hard to find this nice little niche to drop into after graduation that we don’t even stop and consider that it might not even be built yet. People always get this little disappointed look in their eyes when I tell them I don’t know what I want to do after graduation, that I’ve somehow let them down by not knowing my own future. Look, I know I need some sort of plan, but if it’s not something I’m going to enjoy doing, I’m not interested. 

Be a lawyer. Be a librarian. Go to grad school. Teach. 

All of these suggestions have been hurled at me and each one sort of just fills me with dread. I used to want to go to grad school. Believe me, I used to be excited about school, and I was going to go to college and get like 50 Bachelor’s, 28 Master’s, and like 40 PhD’s, because I fucking could. Now? I am counting down the days until I finish here and then I am done. Maybe not forever, grad school might happen sometime in the very distant future, but right now, I am over school. 

I do not know what I want to do. I know I don’t want to work in an office. I know I don’t want to work a part time retail job and end up becoming so cynical and jaded that it destroys every ounce of motivation I managed to hang onto through college. I don’t want to be stuck somewhere because I need to support myself. I want to be able to support myself doing something I enjoy, something that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning. 

So what makes you happy, Claire?

Music. Writing. Traveling. Doing something that matters. Having an impact on something. Do you know what sort of massive dreams a little girl who grew up reading fantasy novels can have? I want to climb mountains and fight dragons and meet interesting people and discover new cultures and foods and then keep all these adventures and carry them with me forever. But how do I translate that into the real world? 

Haven’t quite figured that one out yet.

But I’m working on it. 

13 March 2012

You’re supposed to write every day. Write a lot, just get it out, and maybe amidst all the deluge you’ll find a diamond or two. That’s the point of NaNoWriMo, that’s the point of writing every day that just about every author stresses when asked. I don’t follow that rule very often, but after doing some honest writing today for the first time in months, I think I hit on a diamond at the end:

I’ve got the front of this journal stuffed with old train and plane tickets. I’m ready to add another stub to my collection. I sit still too much and I want to move, stretch my legs, see what sort of wonders and adventures are still out there. That’s the biggest reason I write - it’s an adventure, a journey, one that doesn’t require a ticket. But sometimes I do need to get up and leave, if only to find new stories to commit to these pages.
- journal entry 13 March 2012 

Never let your pocketbook dictate the way that you’re going to dream. 
- Phantoms, State and Madison