Memories
It occurred to me that as a writer, I should probably be doing more writing than I am. I think part of that comes from my sudden confusion as to what I write. Am I a novelist? Should I write short stories? Or am I a poet? That was what it started off as. For the most part, at least. Loads and loads of poetry filling blank journal after blank journal. Each decorated differently, and each having the final number of poems contained in each book at the front. I think from my high school years they total over 400. I remember sitting in the cafeteria during gym class, grateful to my doctor for excusing me for pretty much the whole of the semester. I would sit at a table by myself, penning poem after poem of being trapped in a cave, or of bridges and water and dark, lonely nights. I was emo before the term “emo” was ever coined.
I wrote my first poem when I was seven or eight. On little scraps of paper that I was so proud of because they rhymed. When I was ten, I took to typing a story on my family’s bulky Mac LCII. I don’t remember much of the story – only that it was about a girl my age who ended up in a hospital or something. And that it was about 50 typed pages long. This was very important to remember. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t 50 pages. Maybe 20. And I wish more than anything that I could find that story now. I’m hoping to go through things at my parents’ house sometime to try and find some of my old writing. I think it would be interesting to read.
But now, I think I’ve reached an impass. But I shouldn’t have, really. I should just be doing what I love to do, right? Whether it ends up being expressed in a poem or a book or a memoir. I feel like real writers have a genre. Something they stick to. But I tend to vacillate around and around, putting words on a page and hoping that they are significant in some way.
Tonight, I’m just writing. When I finish this blog entry, I think a poem is starting to form in the back of my mind. I can’t explain how, but it’s just there. Waiting. It’s kind of like myself, in a way. Waiting patiently to burst through and become something.
Because, after all, if I have the stuff in me to make a chrysalis with, then I must have the stuff in me to make a butterfly, too.
