When I started blogging I was extremely frustrated with my nonfiction writing class. I wanted to write, but I just didn't feel like anything was working. I didn't feel inspired or encouraged the same way I did in the first nonfiction writing class I took at Iowa as a freshman. So, as a lot of you know, I decided to take a break from writing. Or just a break from writing classes, because I'm one of those people who will just always write. After all, I'm a blogger. After a semester off and some time to think, I found myself turning back towards writing essays, so I decided to take another writing class this semester. To push myself even further, I decided to do a reading in conjunction with the literary magazine I work on.
Four weeks after volunteering to read I am sitting in front of my computer frantically trying to get something out. I have several finished essays I could fall back on, things I've written in past classes and edited. But I just want to have something new. Something really great. I wrote one essay my freshman year that I really loved and ever since then I've just been trying to get back to that essay. Although I reread the essay over the summer, and found several things I wanted to revise. So even that essay wasn't the best it could be.
Maybe I'm being overly critical of myself. When I do read an essay I've written or have someone else read they usually so lots of really good nice things about it. But... I don't know. I'm just having a hard time writing the way I used to. I have a lot of ideas, which makes it that much more frustrating. I write down idea on top of idea on top of idea. Then I sit in front of my computer to type and... nothing. Blank stare. Flashing line. Wordless.
I don't aspire to be a writer. It'd be cool to get an essay published and so on, but that isn't really what I'm pushing towards. I don't feel as if that is what I'm called to do. So why do I have to take is so seriously? If it's just a hobby then why the obsession. I don't know.
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