Life Is A Mirror

According to the requirements of the class that spawned this blog, this will be my last entry. That's it, all done, time to pack it up and go home. Good game, and all that. You're done! You made the grade!

So why don't I feel done? Why do I feel like the fact that the requirement is over is the worst thing that could happen, instead of the best? After all, we spend our entire academic lives looking ahead to those moments when we can be done, when we can be finished and get our grade and move on. I know that I'm looking forward to the last day of the semester from the very first time I step into the classroom at the beginning of the term. And it's not because I don't like being a student, that I don't like this class or any class (well, there's some classes I haven't liked, but those are another story.) It's simply because I like the feeling of being done, I like not having to worry about this paper or that essay or these tests.

So why do I hate the fact that it feels like the blog is supposed to be done?

That's a rhetorical question, of course, because I know why. I don't want to be done because I've come to look forward to this time that I spend reflecting. I'm proud of the consistency I've learned and the progress I've made. Most of all, I like the fact that I feel like a real writer again. I like being able to look back at my archive and see the road that brought me to this moment.

I've talked about NaNoWriMo and how it's affected me. I can honestly say that if I hadn't done this blog, hadn't learned to force myself to sit here each night even when I really, really didn't want to, there is absolutely no way I could have come as far on that novel as I have. I know this, because I tried NaNoWriMo last year. Got to about 10,000 words or so before I missed a day, and then another, and just like that, my whole drive was torpedoed and I gave up.

In working on this blog, however, I've learned how to deal with missing a day. Falling behind on the requirement, having to work harder just to get caught up. With last year's NaNoWriMo, once I fell behind, I just said "fuck it," and gave up. This blog didn't allow for that; well, technically, I suppose I could have, but I know I wouldn't have been a happy camper. I don't know about you, but I'm sort of depending on these points for my final grade, since not all of my essay work has been stellar.

I've put a lot of thought into what makes a good writer, or hell, what makes a decent writer: really, what makes any kind of writer. At different points during my life, I've had different ideas: talent, certainly, that some people just have this special little sense in their heads for feeling out the flow of a sentence the way musicians feel their music. I don't think that's it, though, not any more: certainly it's useful if you have some sort of natural talent, but it's not going to take you all the way.

That was my biggest problem, for such a long time: I believed that I was talented and I thought that sooner or later, the rest would just sort of happen to me. That a book would just, I don't know, write and publish itself so I could go on with living my dream. Funny how we don't ever say "go out and work your dream." You're always told to just live it.

Okay, so it's not talent. Luck, maybe? Some people are just lucky and get to be writers. They know publishers or agents or people who know people who know publishers or agents, and some how, that little chain of connection produces work. It's interesting to me that at various times, I've equated being a writer with being published. I don't feel that way any more, although I did, for a long time, and in moments of weakness, still do and still will.

So maybe it's not talent and not luck, what about time? I just don't have the time to write. Well, that one was a bullshit idea. Because I did have time. I do. I might not have wanted to cut out chunks of my leisure time, not when I could be playing a video game or watching another episode of Lost, but the truth is, I had the time. I have too much time, in fact. And really, I've found that it only takes me about an hour a night now, working on this novel. Surely I can find an hour during each day to do this! Well, I mean, I guess I can, because I have been.

At different points in my life, I've had different ideas about what makes a writer. I have a new idea today, and hopefully a better one than those of my past self, though I know it won't always be the best one, and that in a year from now, I'll have new ideas, different ideas, hopefully better ones.

But for today, I think what makes a writer is discipline. It's about showing up, it's about working for it and wanting it and telling yourself that you'll do it, because it's never, ever, ever going to just happen to you. I wrote a book when I was sixteen (or was I fifteen?) and for a long time after that, I wondered about how I managed to do it. I told myself that I didn't know, that it had just sort of "happened," and so I spent the next six (or maybe seven) years of my life thinking that writing will just happen. That it happened to me once and it'll happen to me again.

Of course, it didn't happen to me again, at least not in the same spurt it had that first time.

I wish like hell I could have learned this important lesson five years ago. And I'm grateful even more than I learned it now, and not in ten years, or worse, never. Because we all know somebody who "has an idea for a novel, someday." And all of us in these English and Creative Writing majors, all of us aspiring novelists, at least, are secretly terrified that we'll be that person some day, only we'll be that person who also has an unused college degree to go along with that unwritten masterpiece.

So, is the blog done? No. I've told you about what this project has taught me and how it's shaped new ideas and new attitudes. It would be wrong to stop now, however, just because the class no longer requires it. Because if this is what I can learn about myself and my craft from writing for five days a week in three months, can I even imagine what I'll learn after six months? Or a year?

I don't want to imagine it. I'd rather find out for myself.

See you all tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Because there's more to this mirror than just the requirements of the class that began it. It goes deeper than that, even if it's not always kind, or easy.

Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it. ~Ernest Holmes