Thursday, January 5, 2017
10:11 PM
I've been trying to write a cute piece lately. Something that screams, short story and intellectual prowess. I've also been trying to write a piece that has a bit of news and edge to it. You know what, though? That's hard. And my eyes burn from staring at a screen for so long, hoping it will write something on its own. It's hard to write something when you don't want to or don't have the motivation. I thought I had writer's block for the longest time before I realized the blocks were just the topics I was told to conform to.
What fun is that?
A listicle here, a news piece there, maybe I'll throw in an opinion piece about some music group that's on the rise when, quite frankly, I don't care for their sound anyway. Hey, at least I'm honest, right? I think honesty scares some people, it scares editors even more. I can feel the churn of my editor right now as they read through my piece and wonder why on earth this site is called "a voice for the millennial generation"?
When we lose ourselves to the mundane rules which have been set before us we lose our voice. Our creativity can be smashed before our eyes like a beautiful glass table being greeted by a baseball bat. I've tried writing like my generation, or at least what people think my generation's writing should sound like, and I am consistently…bored. I firmly believe that there needs to be that one oddball writer and that one reader who comes across a piece and thinks, "I don't know what she's talking about but I think I like it." Without that, all hope for creativity is squandered in the trailing years.
I can sound like an obnoxious sardonic bird on your shoulder but I've come to embrace it. I've tried writing in a way that fits with my team, to try and adjust to their voices and fit in accordingly. I justify my subliminal tone in the fact that I simply don't want to write that way. Their way of writing reminds me of a soul eating kaiju just waiting to devour any trace of my true voice. I should make the cover photo of this piece Godzilla or Ursula from that Disney movie, and that's only because Hans Christian Anderson didn't have any photos in his book.
After I write this piece I won't look at it for another twenty-four hours. That's if I'm strong enough to wait till then. I'll most likely wait until morning before I dissect it sentence by sentence. That's because I'm a flirt with my words. I like to think when I type my muse rests in my fingertips, soothing me with soft titillating tunes through the letters on my keyboard. We have an amusing relationship, my fingers, and I. They fit me in a way in which your eyes complete your sight, and your toes posture your balance. Sure you can learn to live without them, but let's not think about that for the purpose of what I'm writing right now.
Maybe my next piece will be more cookie-cutter, I can't guarantee I'll ever fit the mold, though. I can do that at my next part time job where I get a fancy name tag and work on my interpersonal skills. Look at that, I'm making a plan to be adult like and productive for society. A life which may not suit me but is necessary to learn from.
This style of life, writing, is something I wouldn't trade for the world. Mostly because I don’t think I could handle being the ruler of the world. That's an awful lot of responsibility.
