I started writing, I think seriously, in my first year at college. One of the things about writing, I believe, is that I can get all my thou8ghts outside of my head and somehow arrange them into some kind of order in sentences and paragraphs and pages. When I’m just thinking, my mind can go through all kinds of thought processes, and it will arrange things at the time, but when I come back to the same concepts later, I essentially, look at things differently. We are always evolving in our thoughts, in our observations, in our perceptions…and at least for me…things don’t always look the same when I come at it in a different time or from a different perspective. What I write today, I would write differently tomorrow if I came back and tried to write about the same subject. And I actually don’t remember how I thought of it the last time…because its another day, and I’m in another place in my life…yes, even from day to day.
With the written thoughts, I can go back and re read them, and even though I may agree with what I’ve written, I usually want to expand or clarify some aspects of those thoughts. Sometimes, the thoughts are good the way they are, but usually I would add to them. I have noticed when I’m writing a story, that many times when i come back and do a re write, I will change words or phrases or even bigger sections because it seems like I should. But, when I come back and do a re write again of the same areas, many times I will change the thoughts again, and find that they more closely reflect the way I had it in the first place.
Sometimes I do forget all about what I’ve written. I started journaling when I started writing. Most of what I did was journaling with things put in about subjects I thought I might write about later. Sometimes I got on binges and wrote pages and pages, and other times just a page or two. I wrote every chance I had when I wasn’t doing things with friends or studying or stuff like that. My favorite times were when I could sit back up somewhere on campus against a tree or building and watch the world going on around me. I have boxes and boxes of my writing that I probably have never re read. I think some day, maybe I will make a story of my life from the pages. It is after all, the story of my life…from 1970 thru now. I also began putting some of it on word processors and disks and such. As machines crashed and technology changed, a lot of that is lost forever. The paper notebooks however, are still there. something like this could be put out in to the net world, and though it may exist…it may never be heard of again. The paper notebooks are stored away. And though they may never see the light of day, they seem more real and accessible to me.
Still, I enjoy writing in any form. But I have always wanted my writing to get out where it can be read…even if its not read. A book in print form would be an example. But I never really wanted to pay to have my work published in book form. I always felt i would find a way some day without having to pay. Its kind of like that with ebooks. I can put my work out there for basically nothing… and its there to be read. I do realize that I still have to find a way to reach a wider audience if I am ever to really gratify my desire for more people to read what I write, but I think I will get there some day…if I live long enough.
I have lots of material that I would like to get placed in to ebook form, and much of it that I would like to have available thru written book form like the print on demand formats such as Create Space. I’m working on that too. Got a long way to go there as well. And I go thru periods of not being able to either write or work on getting my stuff in print. Like now, we’re working on a rental house, also part of my retirement income plan, and it takes up pretty much all of my time during which I might have written. I do feel the need to have some blocks of time to immerse myself in my thoughts or stories. I find it incredibly hard for me to write a paragraph or two or even a page or two unless I have some block of time to get in to it. If I try to write and get interrupted several times within trying to write a few paragraphs, my train of thought gets totally derailed…and I give up in frustration. Sometimes I will try to come back and work it, but that usually doesn’t work for me. Perhaps I don’t have the ability to focus on things like I should. Perhaps I have no discipline. Perhaps I just have a lot on my mind that keep crowding out what I’d really like to be doing. Like now, I took a lunch break, but its time for it to be over. Time for me to get back to other things. Sure, nothing pressing for me to do. Sometimes it is enough for my job is just to be here and available. I get those other things done when they need to be done.
But for now, I think I need to stop. Maybe I’ll get back to some more later…maybe not.
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