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Posts tagged ‘Writing’

Apr 18

Time

Punjabi

Punjabi (Photo credit: John C Abell)

I have been meaning to write. I mean it. I really did.  If only somehow, I could have transcribed the words from my brain to the blog, life would be easy. No wait, on second thought.  That’s probably not a good idea.  I am coming to the end of a workday, and somehow it seemed fitting to close out the business hours with something on my personal to do list.  Something that I can say I am truly passionate about.  Before you say self-pity, I meant the new convictions in my life.

I recently turned 40, and let’s just say it hasn’t been easy to NOT feel sorry for myself.  I want to read more, work out more, write more, travel more, do all the things I have been promising myself now since I was 18.  Then it hits me. Why not start now?  What is really stopping me?  So here I go again (Sorry family and loved ones).  Writing, that is.  But there will be a change.  That much I promise you.  I am going back to my roots (no I am not going to write in Punjabi).  I will become a columnist. What will I write about, you ask? (at least,  I hope your asking)  The life around me, my new passions, things that piss me off.  Perhaps it will be much ado about nothing, but I will be writing, moving the fingers across the keyboard, keeping the writer in me on life support, because I know HE is dying.

So here goes to the new me.  Wish me luck!

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Jul 4

Energy: A Blog Post

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

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I remember writing few months back where all my energy, ideas and focus melded into one need to get the story done.  I was smiling and truly enjoying the process, just living the dream of being a writer, knowing that what was being laid down was pretty good and I could do this.  I want that moment back, those blissful hours when it seemed becoming a writer full time was not a fantasy, that I was good enough dammit!  Yet lately, I seem to have found people who either don’t think much of my writing or dismiss it.  Worse, still I have others who manage to always feel bad about blogging or posting on Facebook even when I am supremely careful of not blogging names and keeping my status updates to a minimum.  I feel stifled and trapped into being a certain type of personality on social media as if I have to apologize for being open about my thoughts and feelings.  Sure, I have said too much sometimes and called out others when it was not my business to, and to that I can only apologize and call it a learning process, yet I feel trapped with the label of someone who talks too much.  It’s soul and creativity killing to know that my words are scrutinized to be either dismissed or confirm my status as a big mouth.

I want my words to have the energy they did when I wrote freely and got them out of being in my body, bottled up for so long.  That’s where I want to get to.  Let’s hope that the ones who are judging me know that they are killing me softly.

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Jun 18

Facing and Fearing: A Blog Post

Lost: Missing Pieces

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1) The cost of inaction is not much truth be told if I accept my life as it is.  I have amazing friends, family, wife and work yet what is missing is my creative soul.  I feel I traded that in somewhere in my first marriage and it has taken me decades to realize how much I miss it.  As materially wealthy as I am, my soul is poor and starved for action and the more I have done this writing exercise, the more I see how it is to get out of inaction.

I have so much more to gain by trying that the only failure that will string is the lost chances to write.  I see myself writing regularly and lately my visions for work and love have gotten clearer as if I was in a fog and until writing cleared away the cobwebs, I was merely content.  Now I am full of energy, working out, writing, loving, planning things, it’s as if I am running out of time, and I want to get it all done and now.

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Jun 5

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Trust 30 Prompts: Catching up online (A Blog Post)

Title page of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609)

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So I got a bit lazy in terms of posting my prompts but somehow the defensiveness side of me wanted to make them public so whoever reads my blogs knows that I am not a quitter or one who does not follow through so here are my prompts that I have putting on random documents for the last few days.

Post-it Question by Jenny Blake

That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? . . . Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Identify one of your biggest challenges at the moment (ie I don’t feel passionate about my work) and turn it into a question (ie How can I do work I’m passionate about?) Write it on a post-it and put it up on your bathroom mirror or the back of your front door. After 48-hours, journal what answers came up for you and be sure to evaluate them.

Bonus: tweet or blog a photo of your post-it.
My post it note that’s planted on my laptop was:  HOW DO I GET PASSIONATE ABOUT WRITING REGULARLY?  Today is 48 hours later, and I keep remembering the time when I took the class Revisiting the Muse, and it was during those days as well as her Cancer treatment that I was really, truly into the experience of writing because it was my only way of truly expressing myself.  Whenever I veer away from the path of using writing as my ultimate expression tool, I resort to pettiness, day-to-day nostalgia and somehow feeling full of this emotional gunk that makes me not even like myself really.  So what was it about those times? A writing schedule, and a morning one at that.  I don’t know when I turned into a morning person but the last few years, what I have in common with my dad is truly scary.  Nowadays, he is up at 530 and in bed b 9pm.  Ok, so I am not that bad, but I was waking up around 730 and in the quiet of the morning, when I had no distractions, I would pour out my soul.  But some silly comments that I was always in the other room, I took to mean that I shouldn’t be writing when the complaint was not about the other room but about disappearing with no comment and not spending quality time. So I stopped the writing schedule, and although I did not immediately feel it, my writing has suffered and the past few classes, I have merely trudged through the assignments, cutting and pasting from older essays not realizing exactly why my creativity had dried up. Now I see it.  I need that morning outlet, I need to keep reading, I need to stay intellectually stimulated.

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May 30

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My Writing Sucks: A Blog Post

Janss Steps, Royce Hall in background, UCLA

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For the first time since I started on my UCLA extension classes, I am wondering what made me think I could actually write.  This is the first time also I took only one class, and yet it feels as if my entire certificate for creative non fiction depends on it.  The class is for personal essays, how to write one and get published.  We have only written 5 essays but it feels as if I have written 50.  The worse part: my writing absolutely, without any doubt in my mind, sucks.  I mean it’s awful.  Instead of showing, I am telling. Instead of describing people, I am using stock characters.  And grammar? Forget about it, it looks like I stopped around 8th grade.

At first, it was easy to blame the class (teacher sucks, essays too general, no lectures, etc) and then I realized that the issue really was me.  My first topic was about my grandfather, the second about my mom and sisters opening up Ziba, the third about my difficult writing, and the fourth and fifth about cancer.  Each topic emotionally loaded for me, but more importantly not really dealt with at the time so as I began writing, I lose myself into that time period so the writing resembles that of a child.

Writing about Ziba and my dad;s drinking is just plain hard mainly because I have such mixed emotions about it.  When Ziba started, I was at UCLA and then Law school and I was 13 when my dad drank and it has had a powerful effect on me.  The main reason its hard because Ziba is in my lifeblood and I love my dad so much now, more so because he is one of the few people I know in my life who did a 180 turn in life to save his family.  I have so much respect, pride and love for him that it’s hard to look at a time when I felt nothing for him.  As for Ziba, it;s just hard to write about it because I have the guilt that I could have done so much more and that perhaps I didn’t have much to do with it for it to be successful.  In a way, maybe I am riding it coattails, but then I see my family and they just don’t see it like that and won’t let me either.

Finally, my love and cancer. This part’s the hardest just because it was so recent but more importantly it involved someone I love so completely that it’s hard to imagine being without her.  So here I am, in a personal essay class where all the essays are so personal that they don’t mean much to others because I havent dealt with my own issues, and thus the writings are full of meandering thoughts and emotions that frankly aren’t very fun to read if I was totally honest with myself.  Let’s hope I figure it out soon before I truly feel like a failure.  I am open to suggestions :)

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Jan 8

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The Artist’s Way

It took me quite a while to start writing today namely because my eyes kept wandering over to other sites (flickr/install new mac updates/Mac App stores) and thoughts (I really need to finish watching the Justice League of America Season 2/I need to get a physical/why isn’t my Apple TV synching to the Macbook). It was as I was starved for intellectual stimulation or perhaps because I knew I was already behind on my post a day self-promise.  Yet somehow, it does not sting as much as I thought because I an constantly thinking of writing. However, there is the 900 pound gorilla in the room: what to write about.  As much as blogging is satisfying in that I get to vent, I know I haven’t gotten to the real task: to writing original content.  That’s a new problem because in high school, I stumbled onto short story writing, at UCLA personal columns, and now blogging.  It appears I cannot write unless there is a significant part of me invested into the words, and that’s a bit scary and troubling at the same time because I truly believe if you are a writer, you should be able to write in just about any genre and so with that in mind I am going to attempt to write my first short story in years.

I haven’t decided if I am going to post as I write or when it’ complete, but I know the progress will be noted in my writer’s group (the first such group I ever have joined), and perhaps as a testament to the seriousness of my writing when I start my Writer’s Studio seminar at UCLA.  Either way, I know I need to do more than just whine on here or talk about her friends or my feelings.  I need to produce so I can finally make the transition from would be writer to actually being one.

by Jemal Yarbrough

 

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