My Mumbling Thoughts

So I've been writing.

Correction. I've been thinking about writing, how I'm going to write it, planning it out, making lists, sketching it all together and composing bits and pieces in my head.

I've also been reading.

There's one book that I have called Will Write For Shoes which is really good and makes sense, and then there's also one I have to read for one of my lectures that starts in a few short weeks called The Weekend Novelist, which is always getting referred to in all of these other books I've been reading, but it's just so hard for me to properly get into it. Why does it have to be so painful for me?

And I'm still reading good 'ole Virginia Woolf. God. She's just so awesome. Why can't I write like her and tell stories like she does? All of her words make sense when they're pieced together.

And mine?

Well. Let's not talk about that right now.

This past week has been me chilling at Helen's house, because last week was my last week of work since they told me that I was no longer needed. I didn't get fired, but my temporary job just came to an end. It happens. I knew it was going to happen. It wasn't a shock. I decided to take advantage of this free time that I've been given and get a good start on constructing the first chapter of the novel I'm supposed to be working on, because I've been wanting to send some stuff over to my friend, Erik (not VA Erik, but blogger friend Erik).

And what have I written? A page and a half of boring, mindless drivel that serves no purpose in my story. And what are they always telling me in my lectures and these writing "self help" books? They tell me that EVERY WORD MUST SERVE A PURPOSE. And I'm all, "hey, let's write about stupid shit that doesn't belong in the story, but you think should go there because, why not?"

Yeah. None of it makes sense.

I've decided I'm going to scrap it all because it's all a load of wank. Trust me. I would let you read it, but I'm not that mean. I'm not that cruel. I wouldn't want to inflict that kind of pain upon you.

All summer I've been piecing together this story that I've thought of, I've been sculpting it all together and planning, planning, PLANNING. I even have the first two chapters sketched on notepads, have done all of my character checklists, thought about them all and have re-structured things so that they fit better and have scrapped ideas that seemed good, but would be better to be left out in the long run. All that's left to do is to start writing.

Write.

So I started and have decided that since the first page and a half sucks (which it has taken me weeks to write that pathetic page and a half), I'll just get rid of it and start again.

With the page and a half that is, not the story. I'm keeping everything else.

I don't know why I choked. The only reason I can think of is because I just put way too much pressure on myself. Already, I know. When I sit and think about it for any length of time, I get all holy shit, this is the beginning of my first real novel and I panicked. I proper freaked out in my head and lost sight of what I wanted to write about, whose voice I wanted to be speaking throughout the story and forgot that writing is supposed to be fun, not stressful. I wanted everything to be perfect and when I finally took to the keyboard my fingers decided to betray me and write something completely opposite to what I've been thinking about all summer long.

So that page and a half? Is going straight into the little trash bin icon that sits in the bottom right hand corner of my screen.

I may have said good-bye to the past two years that have caused me so much grief, but that doesn't mean that the fear I have inside me hasn't gone away. My fear is that it'll happen again, and I definitely do not want an encore of any of that. I'm excited to get a start at a new year, but I'm so scared that I'll fall susceptible to all of the same things and will end up right where I was only a bigger failure.

So this story, this novel, I've been putting everything into it all summer. I want it to be fresh and funny, but I also want it to be a proper representation of me, my writing skills, what I've learned over the past two years and tell a story that is super close to my heart. I don't want it to be a "chick lit" or a "dramatic story" or anything like that. I want it to be about life and have people relate to it and take something away from it.

I remember when I was in the second grade in Mrs. Bowman's class. We lived in Denver, Colorado at the time and it was when I learned about the tall tale. We were told that we were going to write our own tall tales. We were going to write them on those brown sheets of paper with the blue dotted lines on them that kids use when they first start learning how to write, and that each sheet was going to be connected to each other. Then we were going to take a picture of Paul Bunyan's head and his blue ox, and staple it to the top of our story, and then staple their feet at the very end. The finished products were going to hang in the hallways from the ceiling to the floor and be on display for anyone to read who walked by and cared to read whatever a second grader had to say.

Boy, I got excited. I remember thinking to myself that I was going to write the most and have the longest tall tale ever, and my story was going to make sense and be ten times more awesome than everyone else's. Why? Because I was awesome, that's why.

I took my brown paper with the blue dotted lines home and I worked on it for TWO WHOLE DAYS, which for a second grader is a fucking long time and a big sacrifice. I missed out on Ghostwriter, which was one of my favorite TV shows. But I wrote non-stop while Momma cooked dinner for us, all throughout the day and only stopped to sharpen my pencil.

When Monday arrived and we started piecing our stories together, I saw that many of my classmates wrote about six or seven pages and that was it. I had easily written the most and was so proud that the bottom of my Paul Bunyan's feet needed to be rolled up and paper-clipped together because my story was just THAT long. I remember there was one boy whose story was longer than mine, but it didn't matter in the end and you want to know why?

Because Mrs. Bowman kept my story. She asked me after our stories had been on display in the hallway for two weeks if she could keep mine to show other students in the future what a good tall tale is, and what an impressive writer I was at such a young age. She said she understood if I wanted to keep it for myself, but I told her she could have it. She didn't ask the other boy. I saw him shove his into his plastic backpack later that day.

I may have gotten slightly derailed over this new story of mine, but the second grader that still lives inside of me is dying to get to writing again; properly writing, just like how I did in Mrs. Bowman's class. I want to be able to get so freaking excited about a story that I don't stop for anything except to recharge my laptop battery. The second grader Sammi Jo wasn't afraid of writing anything back then, and she shouldn't be scared now either.