Writing

I wrote this for the Invictus Writers group, a group of ball state students I joined that writes and publishes a book each year. They told me to “write a scene and bring it with me” to the first meeting:

I don’t know why words come to me in the wee hours of the night. Witching hour, some would say, can conjure literary magic. I can’t convince my mind to shut up and shut off. I might regret these words in the morning, but right now they are the only ones keeping me company.

Sometimes I prefer writing to talking. It’s not that I don’t enjoy good conversation, but speech can be hastily. It behaves like fast women in nine inch heals and too short dresses, drunk with there own foolishness.

Writing is slower, leaving less room for lies. Written words conduct themselves with a bit more poise. However, it’s a nervous type of composure; something like a 15-year-old girl selecting her attire before going on her first date.

Even more horrifying is when the writer suspects her words might actually have an audience.

I lay in the dark, my keyboard faintly illuminated by the light from my screen. I didn’t need to see to know where the letters were. Light doesn’t make finding the right keys any easier.

What did I sign myself up for? I knew this would be different than the stories I’ve written for the Ball State Daily News, different from the stories I wrote during my internship with The Indianapolis Recorder. Even different than the summer where I had so much free time that I decided to write a 40,000 word novel that’s now collecting dust on webook.com. That hassle of a ‘novel’ was the start of my creative writers block.

Pen to page, I pushed myself now. Why call yourself a writer if you refuse to write anything good? Writing is about perseverance, above most anything else. In that way, a writer is a brave person.

I didn’t feel brave. In journalistic writing, you tell others people’s truths. In books, you tell your own truth. There can be a wealth of fact in fiction, but even more fact in fact.

All of my facts run over themselves, a perfect picture of the noise in my brain. They race each other and refuse to stop in agreement that their purpose was accomplished. And I’ve never been good with endings.