It’s More Like Guidelines
The problem with being able to write whatever you want is, you can write about anything. The empty space isn’t mocking be, but the presence of something akin to an essay question would be somewhere to start. That would give a subject to write about and swerve me past the real question; what do I want to write about. Or more precisely the answer to that question; I don’t want to write about anything enough to actually write about it.
In the morning I write in my journal. For nearly the last year I have gradually come up with a few guidelines to help me. I also have permission to write nonsense words to fill up space so that I can enjoy the act of writing without any pressure. My journal practice has just the right amount of constraint to freedom that I routinely wake up before my alarm excited to start writing. By the time I sit down, approximately ten minutes after waking up, I know where I am starting. After that I go where the thoughts take me, I buffer, I get a little distracted (I write that down) and it can be an hour or more before I am happily done.
Some days I write a lot, some days I don’t. The big advantage of my journal is that I am the only one who is going to read it. I know Rick Rubin says to create without thinking of your audience, but I am pretty sure if one of his artists put out a work of experimental mime poetry instead of a music album, something would be said about it. I am, of course, the architect of my own dilemma, I want the opportunity to be expressive and do new things, however, I don’t feel have new things to be doing.
I have seen “everything’s a remix” so I don’t burden myself with the impossible requirement of being original. Not to subvert the whole film, but now the task is originality of combination and derivation because the original ideas have been taken. Essentially, we creatives are, for the most part, looking to express something or elicit something; with poetry often, it’s both.
What do I want to express of elicit? What I am looking to express is quite simple; I am here, look at me, look at what I do, I am a real person living a real, messy life and that is absolutely ok. Putting out our real selves gives other people implicit permission to put their own delightfully messy, flawed selves out into the world. By doing this, I want to elicit the same feeling of not being alone that I feel when I discover people like me. I want to be a voice adding to the validation of lives and experiences.
Which when I write them out are some big goals, that I want to achieve in small ways. I do want to succeed, and it would be amazing to take my creative passion into an income and independence. Which is a lot of pressure to put on something I am doing for fun, and significance that ultimately it doesn’t have.
So, maybe, once again I am overthinking things and making a mountain out of a hill of beans. Something like that anyway.
