Writing Assignment 2

Writing Assignment

Now that you're in a new living arrangement ,and a new job, write about how these changes in your life have encouraged (or discouraged) you in your writing. Elaborate on the steps you plan to take to maximize the encouragements and minimize the discouragements as far as they apply to your writing. Also address how change - both large and small changes - can add richness to your writing , even when the changes are hard or negative.

Happy Writing!

Katz >^. .^<


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Changes in my life are still happening: painting/decorating the new place, ending my publishing internship soon, looking for a new job, starting a new band that and having our first practice on Monday, and most of all, adjusting to living with my girlfriend and trying to be a responsible boyfriend. During all of this, and really during any periods of calm or chaos, I’ve never been met with a creative drought as far as character and plot ideas are concerned. If I had a ghostwriter attached to my hip, I’d be arguing with my agent right now about how to present my fifth novel to Random House. My problem is the follow-through: from the initial fear at not meeting my own expectations, to convincing myself that “writers are old, and I’m only 24, so it will happen eventually,” to finally using other responsibilities as an excuse to not set aside time, even the smallest parcel, for my characters to crawl out my fingertips.

But back to the subject of change:

The publishing internship, though it’s coming now to an end, has been very inspiring, and despite some days where I feel like an ant beneath my co-workers’ shoes, I come home each day feeling fulfilled. This is obviously encouraging because I've just worked eight hours in several different departments of a publishing company, and it inspires me to write the same way that spending all day in a library does. Despite the fact that I only write a few sentences, a few thoughts, maybe a story synopsis or two before getting distracted or involved in something else, I can't discount the constant feeling of inspiration that carries me home from the internship each day. The same goes for living with my girlfriend, which is something any 24 year-old male might fear would be the end of his personal freedom (video game time). But it's been nearly perfect since day one, and I am so much more in love with her than before. And love is certainly an inspiration worthy of high regard.

The discouraging aspect to everything going so well, is that I am almost bereft of any need for catharsis. In fact, I was three pages into a story about how close friends can just grow apart from each other after so many years of being alike, a theme that was ruling my life just a few months ago, and as soon as I moved and distanced myself from my old housemate, my work on that story halted almost immediately. A dozen new story ideas replaced it, and now it's hard to focus on that and get back on track with where I left off.

I've heard quite often that the best writers are the ones who are most depressed, the most lonely, the most in need of release, and even the most prone to alcohol abuse when they aren't getting high to literally talk to their characters. I find any stereotypes to be void of merit, and I think that I just need to put more effort into sitting down by myself, maybe putting on some tunes, and letting my imagination run wild on the page without any hesitations. It's not emotional motive that I lack, but discipline. When I think about it, the five good stories I've written were for the purpose of appeasing a deadline.

So in order to maximize the encouragements of my new circumstances, and Per Katz's requests from a previous assignment, I spoke openly to my girlfriend about my writing struggles, about my new story, about how depressing it feels to be wasting talent (all things she didn't know about until last week), and it felt so good to open that door and let her in. Having someone close to you and knowing that they believe in you is very inspiring. I've also stopped watching serialized TV shows, and after a few days without all those characters I'd become obsessed with and spent so much time with instead of doing my own writing, I felt this overwhelming hunger for storytelling. My reading sessions became much more frequent and more focused, which inspired me to start that vocabulary list I mentioned in my discussion response. I realized that I'd resorted to finding comfort in other people's characters rather than culturing my own. This still leaves the big-bellied beast known as discipline, but I believe these two new changes will help prepare me for battle.