writing’s dilemma and more

Okay, to begin with, I am NOT a great writer. Not the best way to build credibility, but also, letting you know ahead of time that this is a probable dumpster fire lost in a pit of paywalled, premium Medium stories. If you read this, you didn’t.

(How good do you have to be to start premium-ing your writing? Genuine question.)

I’m just writing as I see fit, but I don’t know how to write. Not in the literal sense, but also kind of. When I see people publish their pieces around me, I wonder how they do it. They sound intelligent, distinguished, and all sorts of good things. I gas myself up and think, “Oh, I can do that too if I really tried!”

Reality says, “No.”

Ever since I was a teeny little kid, I loved writing in the sense that I wanted to plagiarize my favorite books. So I did. I have an ultra secret Drive full of pseudo-plagiarized stories I wrote since middle school. If you think opening a can of worms is bad, try opening my very first attempt at fantasy writing. I will not disclose what it was, but I doubt my writing when it comes to the ro-fan genre has changed much. RIP to the impassioned writer I once was at 13. Respect to all those writers out there because I cannot put my imaginary worlds into words that do them justice.

Back to the main point though, I think writing is just really hard. It’s fine if I’m pouring out my inner thoughts like this, because diary thoughts are always fun. When it comes to other types of writing, I’m lost and sound like its my first day on Earth. I mean everybody starts somewhere, but I’m not going anywhere with this one. Of course, there are writers of all different kinds who excel at various things, so obviously, there are gifted people out there in the world who just write like it’s third nature.

COLLEGE ESSAYS for example. Holy crap, suddenly I forget every basic thing I learned about writing, and decide I’m going to use elementary-level comprehension about MY own childhood. Crazy how this works. My writing only serves me when it wants to.

At some point, my inner kid writer has come to peace with the fact that I will stay an essayist for school assignments since I happen to love those. Maybe I’m into academic research and I just don’t know it yet. I don’t know. Everything’s a question mark.