Something I--once again--realized when I spoke with a friend a couple of days ago: it takes guts to write. And it takes even more guts to write without the expectation of a reward.
Samuel Johnson famously said that "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." In a technology-steeped world where most anyone can write--can create a blog, a web page, what-have-you--a lot of blockheads are writing. And not writing for money. Some blockheads actually have valuable things to say, some don't.
It's interesting, I suppose: by typing this, right now, I'm not feeling that I'm laying much on the line. It's not a risk to tell you what I'm thinking. It's not scary to speak my mind. But maybe that's because I'm filtering. Maybe that's because I've never written in this because it felt like a risk. I've taken great pains to make this blog personal without being too personal.
If anything, I think I started a blog because it feels utterly safe: nobody can call me on not writing what I think, because nobody can know what I think outside what I write. (With the obvious caveat that, if you know me in real-time, you obviously have a far better idea of what's going on with my life.)
Where am I going with this?
Oh, writing. I decided that it has been too long since I've written something that has made me vulnerable: too long since I took up a pen to write a poem, scribbled out a story idea, attempted to write a novel. It has been too long since I took the risk of taking time to write something that practically begs for external validation.
I have a few poems to revisit--works from a few years ago that I still love, but works that need improvement. I have a few stories half-finished. Time for completion. And I have a few ideas floating around my head that deserve to be committed to paper.
Changes are good.
It's time to take some risks.
Friday, March 26, 2010
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