Lately, I’ve been getting the itch to write. More than usual, that is. I’ve kept journals since I was 14, so it’s almost natural that I’m a blogger at this stage in my life. What you might not know about me is that I majored in Playwriting and Screenwriting in college. Useful, right?
Though I don’t want to be a big Hollywood writer anymore like I dreamed I would be at a much younger age, I still feel that my calling in life is to write. After college, I wasn’t sure since I was burnt out from scripts and deadlines. I suffered a devastating grade on my final script (I totally deserved it since I wrote 90 pages in 2 days–procrastinate much?) and was so humiliated by the whole thing that I felt I could never write again. Melodrama IS my specialty, after all. I’ve felt it coming back to me though since I started taking blogging seriously. Not just the urge to write screenplays, but to write books or articles or whatever I can.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been unable to sleep in the wee hours of the morning because of the ideas spilling out of my brain. I’ve literally gotten my ass out of bed at 3am just to write. I don’t think this kind of inspiration/insanity has occurred since high school, when writing was everything I lived and breathed and wished for.
It’s giving me a little bit of hope that maybe I wasn’t so wrong in college to learn how to construct a story and tell it in a compelling manner. Whether or not I did it so well back then is debatable, but I still have the tools and the knowledge so I don’t see why I couldn’t at least try to put it to some use. Plus, while that script I wrote in 2 days was terrible–I still wrote 90 pages in two days. I think that kind of production only comes from psychokillers with manifestos and people who actually like to write. I hope I’m the latter.
Part of me feels really silly saying all of this–like being a writer is too lofty of a goal or too presumptuous for just one of a billion bloggers on the internet to think, “hey, I could do this.” But since I’ve had extra time on my hands and forsee a bit more extra time once we move to Spain, why the hell not? Why shouldn’t I take this opportunity to really see if I could do it? And why shouldn’t I splash all of my hopes and dreams up for people on the internet to see & secretly make fun of me? Someone has to do it, right?
At this point, it’s almost impossible to think that I could make money as a writer since it’s very rare for bloggers to make a living off of their sites, and I don’t know the first thing about publishing, and I don’t even have a book or script to worry about that yet. So things aren’t looking so hot right now on that front, but as a dreamer, I gotta start somewhere, right? Also, while I’m dreaming, it’d be nice to be the next JK Rowling or something 
Hell, I’d settle for Stephenie Meyer too, even though she’s panned critically. Bitch is RIIICH!
What about you, bloggers? Do you have higher writing goals or is blogging just a nice outlet for you?
Estelle Reply:
August 10th, 2011 at 6:25 pm
I also thought I was going to be a journalist. That’s what I originally went to college thinking I would do, but it wasn’t until my junior year that I realized how news picks and chooses what they tell you, and I didn’t want any part of that. It’s a very demanding job, and while I think I have a very strong work ethic, just not what I was passionate about doing at all. You make a great point… writing what you want to write and not what others tell you to write.
Oh the college days.
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