I have nothing pressing to say. I just woke up to a barrage of kisses. Sometimes H. does that :) I can't say I mind. In fact, my response was "I can't think of a better way to wake up." He said "what if I had a tray of waffles and eggs and hot coffee?" Okay, that might have been *slightly* better. Then again, I might have been covered with food before I made it out of bed. :)

So I'm on Twitter now, if you want to find me. Look up my email address.

alright. so last night I figured out my "writing problem". Reading over that heavy metal essay, I felt like (and I know it's not necessarily true, but I felt like) I've been a lazy writer. I was lazy with that piece, and I probably won't post it here, because I feel like it's not a "good example" of my writing. D asked yesterday over dinner, "why are you writing about things you don't like?" and before I could respond, A said "because she's a writer, and that's what writers do." I think it's a long-running discussion in their household. Which I understand.
It's a long-running discussion in mine, too, and every time I bring it up, H gets a bit frustrated. "Why don't you just WRITE?" he says. It's not that easy. We're raised (in the University, mostly) to think, perhaps not even consciously, that writers are above other people. That we have some sort of duty to humanity, that anything we set down in words will live on forever. I mean, in my last summer class, we discussed this over and over. One guy said writing makes him feel closer to God. Another said writers have a duty to improve the world with their words. Yet another said writers have a "higher calling" than other people. Every time someone made a comment about the "writer's duty", the class would clap appreciatively. "Oh yes, brilliant point, you are so astute, good job." And I'd squirm in my chair, trying not to be noticeable, but at the same time bursting to yell at these people.
Writers are NOT BETTER than anyone else. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, we're probably worse than most because we THINK we're better. I'm talking mostly of my predominantly white, predominantly middle-class fellow students here when I say "writer", just to make it clear. I'm not talking about people who witness events and feel a duty to report them, like the many people who wrote about the Holocaust. Those people have something to say, and a reason to say it. In that sense, they DO have a higher calling, at least for a while. But I don't know any of those kinds of writers. The ones I know are, like I say, mostly white, mostly middle-class, mostly students learning how to string words together. Just like me. In fact, I'm probably far less white than most of them because of my family and where I was raised. I'm not saying that students aren't valid writers, or that because of being white and middle-class they have no stories to tell. I'm just saying that we have to get over this idea that because we write, we're better than the average person.
And if you go into writing thinking everything you put down must be gold, because it's gonna live on forever... well, you've screwed yourself before you've even started. And that's my problem at the moment. H keeps telling me to just get my work out there, but I can't, because I keep thinking it's not good enough to be published. "It's really hard to build confidence in yourself," I said last night over dinner, "when your confidence is tied up in something that's going to be judged by some anonymous stranger." D added "and every opinion is arbitrary." Yes, exactly. If I got something published, even for free... it doesn't matter where, as long as I'm not SELF publishing it, you know? If I could do that, I'd have some confidence. But before that, I have to face the scrutiny of a bunch of people I don't know. And I'm already at a point where I don't like my own writing. It's so messy and comma-filled. I don't have anything I'm really PROUD of as far as writing is concerned, so I don't have anything I want to send out for publication. I don't have anything gold yet, is what I'm trying to say.
H keeps saying it doesn't matter if it's gold, maybe you don't think it's gold but someone else does. That's possible, I guess, but my low self-esteem won't let me truly believe that. In my head, my writing isn't very good. It doesn't stack up to the rest. I read other people's pieces, like EVERYBODY in writing workshop, even the ones that aren't so good, and I'm like "wow, how did they DO that? I couldn't do that." But I CAN. I just... maybe I'm getting soft. There's no structure, no deadlines, right now. I'm free to just WRITE. But all this freedom is stifling: I don't know where to begin.
I took a whole class on this! What are my stories? I don't know! I can tell you stories of my family, stories that didn't happen to me. I can tell you about my friends (although I'm betting they don't want me to). I can tell you about my parents. But none of this is really me. I don't know where to start!