June 17, 2003
I'm scared to grow up..
I finally got most of the rest of the unpacking that needed to be done, done.
I kept running into various things I've written through the years:- A parody of a play that I was working on at Horizon Theatre Company.
- My kidnapping comedy, that has been in progress for far too long
- I was thinking about my journal in fourth grade where I was really creative, but often spent recess sitting at the table across the hall from the office writing, I enjoyed writing it.
- A lyric rewrite of the song Lady Bug and The Centipede.
- Listen, a play that I wrote and directed my sophomore year of high school
- I've kept a journal on and off for quite a while
- My many websites I've put together during the years
I know thats a short list, but i just haven't felt like wracking my brain. I think the point is that I've always been a writer underlying, just had other things obscuring it. The parody was just because these things had come to my head and needed to get out. The kidnapping comedy was just started because it popped in. The lyric rewrite was because I thought the song was stupid. Listen was a play I wrote to make a point, and I still don't think I've made that point. The websites, was my tech geeking around.
Its a theme that I finally see. Directing a play is writing in reverse. (Whereas writing is taking ideas and converting them into words, directing is taking words converting it into actions and thus ideas.) I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out.
The English program at my school was horrible at supporting writers, it was excellent at supporting literary analysts. I think everyone needs to learn to write and to do that well they need to write about something that they know about. You cannot learn to write while you're attempting to figure out what the hell the book is about. A lot of people can do this, but you're attempting to teach two skills at the same time. Someone like me who is poor at one, automatically thinks they're poor at both, not able to clearly and implicitly separate the two out.
I don't know its strange for me to embrace the fact that "I'm a writer." It seems too simple, to solid, to clear. If its simple it probably won't be right.
An additional piece, over the years I've found myself associating with writers of one kind or another. In college I fell into a group with Dana and other people. Jenni has always seen herself as a writer, Kevin is a writer, he just expresses it through film.
So why do I feel so insecure and scared about this path now? Right now the immediate future looks pretty crabby. I've now got my spreadsheet set up to tell my my negative net worth and its not pretty.
I think the most terrifying thing about this is that I need to work through my procrastination, and self motivate more than anything else, and those are not my strong points, and that terrifies me that I won't ever complete anything.
When I answered the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I never thought I'd be terrified at the answer, but I also thought I had control over the answer.