My writing muscle needs to be stronger. So strong that nothing can distract me. That I can cut through the fluff, my fluff, and say the things that I need to say. I’m reading substack and seeing open journals and wondering why they are prospering? Like, is personal blogging back in vogue? I thought we were studying the world. What are we doing?
Writing to random people about my personal life has always felt narcissistic. What happens in my life that is worthy of being reported? Why talk about me, me, me when there are more interesting things to talk about and even handle interesting people doing interesting things?
When I slowed to think about it, though, I reasoned out that perhaps resisting that urge to write about myself is a form of self-hatred. The great grim reaper of dreams, who replaces a writer’s pen with a scythe, rips the skin off creatives and wears upon them a dark, raggedy cloak, then sits and drinks wine while they hack at their dreams. Self-hatred has to be evil crystallized into a singularly focused action.
This is why I am journaling. To pull out the stops and take from inside my head thoughts that I would not normally share and dso I won’t think about them again. When I write freeform, not thinking about any topics in particular, I discover the unique POV I bring and every experience I have melds together to create a great story.
For instance, I am now thinking, perhaps, I should maintain the first-person perspective in my novel, this journal thing leads me to think. Perhaps we will write something on first-person narrative later on in this trip.
This is the wordcast, writecast, journalcast for today. We’ll workshop it.