I often underplay how much my writing means to me. I am usually very proud of the works i put on the net or anything i create and finish. I take this pride only in the accomplishment that as a writer i have grown through hardwork and some skill. Words now flow easier and it feels comfortable to write now. The only thing that i have not improved much on being very unprolific and that is probably the one thing that makes me weary about pursuing a career in writing. The biggest part of that problem is that I take a long while to find a topic that i can really enjoy and the right questions to ask or search for that will keep the work interesting. it is extrememly important to me to create something unique.
If i think it is trite or overstated i promptly drop whatever i am doing like a two year old with a brick. Right now I am starting a 1500 word argumentative paper about sanity and insanity, their definitions, how the definitions came to be and why should sanity be confined to one set definition when there are so many ways of looking at the world. yep all of that. I would be bored with it otherwise. Need to refine and narrow things a bit but it should be fun.
i was paid the best compliment of my life monday. Now, me getting compliments is very rare and so rare that to be honest, if i ever get one I usually end up flustered or regress to introvert stage again. When a teacher said that my writing was almost on a professional level i beamed inside but got all twitchy and uncomfortable on the surface.
Actually the best compliment i ever been given was actually said to me once before. To prove how much it actually affected me, you have to remember my memory might make an alzhimers patient feel some sympathy towards me. so now story time!
A long time ago('bout four years) in a land far away (tennessee) I arrived at my first and only duty station of my military career. I was damn near a complete introvert and talked very little with those in my company. My only friends were two guys (Amos And Padilla) that went to Advanced Training with me. They both had arrived at Campbell before i did and settled into units similar to mine. I was writing a lot of angsty poetry and heavy on the NIN Dboards causing trouble and being stupid.
One night I am hanging with my buddy Mos and eventually the topic came around to poetry. I was shocked and happy that Mos liked reading stuff like that, so i showed him my work but not out right. I didnt want to embarrass myelf, thus I mixed in two of my haikus with a bunch of other amateur that i thought were pretty good. Mos zeros in on my two alone and says that these two are different and these two are really good. That is the best compliment i can ever get. It prides me to know that my work is unique in a good way.
Last week my history teacher had us write a brief opinion on the chapter we went over that day. It was about the reconstruction era after the Civil War. I stated one of my basic beliefs in humanity (that the more people there are the stupider and meaner that get) and a few more sentences. On monday the teached singled mine reflection out in class, not mentioning any name at all, and during break, this girl i had in my english comp 101 said she recognized my writing and that she thought it was very good.
I havn't seen this girl in months, talked more than 5 minutes at a time, or say hi twice and still she knew it was mine. She wasn't sucking up or trying to be cute; she was stating her honest opinion. That is just how she works. She is one of those people that always state their beliefs and opinions as starkly as possible. Plus she herself is a good writer in my and our old 101 teacher opinions.
so even now days later that one lone compliment has inspired me to write more and improve upon my old poems and kinda gave me that brief flash of insight that helped me think of a really good essay topic.
now i am compiling my work for a college publication of creative and non fictions writing and this time i fully intend to get this work sent. could this be confidence i feel? or maybe pride? this feeling i have right now is so foriegn to me, that after all this time that i dont recognize it. I feel good about being me and i fell great about my writing. Must be confidence. that was seriously the best compliment anyone could pay to me. I don't even hold my work standards as high as my writing. And I put work before a lot of things including health.
long nights fade to longer days. time waits for no monkey and even though it hurts to breath that first lungful of air and to keep breathing, life will get better. nothing is bottomless and any ceiling can be broken.
PS wow i even remember mos and padillas first names! and why does one set of words from a nearly complete stranger matter so much to me?