It's been a really long time since I've written in here. Or honestly written anything at all. I'm nearing my last week of summer vacation before my second year of college, and although I tasked myself before the summer started with developing my writing, I never followed through.
In my English class last semester, an assignment was to read George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language." I think the main thing I took away from that reading is that writing — and I guess the essay is referring mostly to journalistic writing but it can be applied to academic and personal writing too — actually requires thinking and not just, I don't know, stringing words that sound good together. The latter is basically what I rely on when I write essays for school — I usually start out the night before the essay's due not knowing really what I'm even talking about and keep writing things because they sound sophisticated and cogent until I reach the page count (and the deadline). And the fact that the words I use shape my thoughts instead of my thoughts dictating the words I use is exactly what Orwell was arguing against and what I'm guilty of.
But it's not really my academic writing that bothers me — it's the other kinds of writing I never actually attempt because I'm too scared to: the narrative, supposedly reflective writing about myself and my life experiences and how they've shaped me. Or the analytical writing about my thoughts and opinions that are supposed to have some basis in fact, meaning I'm supposed to be informed about the world around me: literature and culture and science and politics. What I concluded after reading that essay and the way I've explained my lackluster personal writing to myself is that the reason I don't write as well as I'd hope is that I don't think enough. If I wanted to be a better writer, I have to become a better thinker. But just that feeling that I am not capable of writing up to my standards was enough to stop me from writing for years, because, I don't know, I'm not willing to put in the work?
I remember the summer before probably sixth grade I made my first blog, and although my writing was probably appalling, I didn't really have any inhibitions and I would write anyway and obnoxiously recruit other bloggers to read my stuff. When I was cleaning my room the other day, I opened my flute case for the first time in probably eight years and discovered something of a time capsule inside it: a picture of me and my best friend in a popsicle-stick frame, a travel-sized Lip Smacker, and a story I wrote in fifth grade typed up on a single piece of paper. The story is what we care about here: it was bad, but I wouldn't even have the audacity to try to write a story now because of my fear of it being bad.
A headline in The New York Times is what caused me to take the leap into writing today. Though when I say "take the leap" it sounds far more consequential than it really is. I saw a headline in the Times today that essentially urged that you bite the bullet and just write if you want to be a writer. I didn't even bother to read the article (I'll probably read it after I'm done writing this; it's open in the next tab) because I almost immediately logged in to Blogger to write this.
This summer I've been working on the copy desk at my school newspaper. Collectively, I've read probably hundreds of stories in the past three months, and especially in the case of columns and arts pieces, which tend to be really well written, they're intimidating in their apparent effortlessness. I guess the thing to remember is that firstly, each piece went through multiple rounds of edits to sound the way they do, and secondly, bite the bullet/take the plunge/[insert other overused adage about doing things that make you uncomfortable] and do the things that you don't do solely because you're afraid of failure.
