Worst Weekend Ever 7 "The Writing Space" (Fin)

[ForceFusion]

This is a little mini-series of my journey as a writer. Writing is difficult and this is a series confronting that. It's mostly non-fiction. In fact, it's a little bit of a journal. I really don't know what it is, but the three pieces are connected in one way: they all come out of this terrible weekend I'm just getting through. There may be a follow up series.

 

Untitled 7 "The Writing Space"

 

I have a tendency to leave unsaved documents open. I used to have a space for creative things I was working on, stories or games I was trying to develop. (For those of you who don't know, Macs allow you do have different "spaces" for different things, basically multiple desktops.) Sometimes I go into such a deep writer's block that I just give up on the separate space. If I have any projects worth working on, I put them on my main space, hiding behind Safari and Skype. There's always another TextEdit document open for my online gaming, sometimes multiple.

 

I thought I'd been in this deep writing block, and the reality that is that I guess I sort of am; I've produced nothing of full substance. For so long I was absolutely afraid of writing, afraid of failing at it, afraid of the work it takes and afraid of hating my own words so much that I can't even begin to start that work.

 

I didn't think I was getting anywhere until tonight. Tonight I decided the best thing for me to do was to open up my writing space once again. No matter how pathetic it might look with one tiny TextEdit dwarfed by the darkness of my background, I just have to have the space open, have to be open to an attempt at writing.

 

Well, turns out it wasn't just one tiny unsaved TextEdit I had hiding behind the internet, it was six, not including this one. And all but one of them was a legitimate creative endeavor. Nothing major, nothing fancy, but they were words and ideas on an electronic page. That's something, right? Maybe I don't get three pages worth every day, but I'm facing my fears now. I'm facing my fears.

 

It seems inappropriate to add another paragraph after the satisfying end that could be represented above, but I have one more thing to say. Why are all those documents unsaved, a savvy reader might ask. Aren't you afraid of losing them if something goes wrong with your computer? Well, the answer is sad. It always took me forever to save my writings because saving them makes them real, it makes them inescapable. They're burnt onto my hard drive if I save them and I can never deny that I wrote them.

 

Plus, I hate not having good titles to save them under. Pathetic, I know. The reason I extend this piece is because I'm about to extend another one. Not only am I going to title and save all these works, I'm going to write something that needs to be written. So, if you're interested, turn your attention to the last line in "Unittled 6" soon to be known as "The Rip Tide."

[Amidala Skywalker]

I love it. Your personality shines through in this segment, and that made it really fun to read. While I can't say I relate to the fear of failure as a writer (I don't really care that much--I just write for my own amusement), I definately can relate to having my computer full of crap that I'm ashamed to have written. I actually don't know why I still have it all. Sometimes I look back on it and shudder, but maybe it's more as a reminder to myself that I can do better.

 

*shrug* Something to think about, anyway, for me. Anyway, great little piece. It really captured many aspects of what it's like to be a writer. I find that when I have writer's block, just attempting to write something, even if it's a little bit, even if it's crappy, helps me break through the writing block.

 

Oh, and your fears of failure are unfounded. Every single thing I've read of yours, whether here or in the RP, has convinced me of that. You're definately one of my favorite writers that I've seen on this board the entire time I've been around here, and that's saying something.