I am not a writer.

I am a thinker, that knows how to write.

I started keeping a journal in the 6th grade. I started scribbling out "Poetry With Potential" in the 7th. Apparently, the creative part of your brain that generates poetry is located in the same sector as the part of your brain that generates your dreams. I went through some odd mental kaleidoscope in junior high school, and I had no way of sifting a damn thing into perspective. I also had no one that I felt would be able to relate. Not understanding the connection between the two, I wrote my ass off.

I had this envelope I swiped off my teacher's table in the 5th grade. It was a nice dark manilla that was unused and crisp; the little metal tabs were still flat and untouched. The glue stripe was shiny, smooth, and for some reason I thought it would taste like rubber bands. It was small, probably for our report cards. I slipped it in between my books happy that it had not yet been marred by my teacher's awful handwriting -- my name in the upper right hand corner, the cursive too tall and too flat at the same time. It lay forgotten in my desk drawer until one day, I felt like cleaning. I found it in the pocket of a divider. Suddenly, my fingers starting itching from the inside, and I grabbed the nearest 5 Star and wrote a story about how I had lost a friend because she had started stealing from me to support her drug habit. It was "inspired" from one of those after-school Don't Do Drugs commercials they played in between cartoons.

I knew it wasn't good, and I knew it wasn't realistic. I had no friends with drug habits yet, so I didn't know how believable the story could be. My whole concept of drugs was a twisted white cigarette in the palm of a mean (and generous, what the hell, did strangers really do that?) looking kid on channel 11. I knew that a pair of star-shaped acid green sunglasses would provide no financial benefit for an addict in need of a fix. Yet, I carefully tore the sheet from its perforated edges, folded it in half, and marveled at how perfectly my fabrications fit inside of this dark, unused, unusual little envelope.

I cannot write fiction. I know that doesn't necessarily qualify me as a "bad writer," of course every talent has its specific fields of weakness. However, I cannot apply what comes so easily to me when scribing observations on emotions and society into a neat and linear storyline. I can't take these words out of the metaphysical -- shit, if that's even the right word -- and drape them onto a character's reality like clothing. I've tried, many many times, and every single story I've started ended up abandoned, forgotten, or just... bad. When I sit in front of a keyboard with the intentions of sticking to a theme, not a single seed will sprout. Hm.

My writing now tends to... elaborate on reality, at its falsest. Did that make sense? But the thing is, loves, it's not the WRITING that elaborates on reality, it's my mind. My fingers just record it all. I have the oddest memory. Any friend of mine can attest to that. Want to hear a little secret? Only about 3/5ths of that manilla envelope story is true. But none of it, not a single part of it, was a lie.

I threw away those stories when I got older. I revisited that first one I wrote with eyes that have actually seen what drugs actually do, and I grimaced. I shuffled through the ones I wrote after that. I kept the ones about my life that were more like diary entries rather than fictional encounters, but eventually I slipped them all into the trash and decided to dedicate myself back to fine arts. Then, blogging happened. *Grin*

I sat down a couple of minutes before starting this post excited to begin a writing project I was actually interested in. It was supposed to be a piece from the perspective of the pussy, and you KNOW I would have died to give the vagina a loud, clear voice. But I typed out one line. And I stared at the screen. Control A, delete, tap tap tap. Another line, which sounded better than the first. Blink, squint, control A, delete. I was going to light a post-quit cigarette (but I didn't! Woot). It was in the middle of the deletion dance that I realized that it's always been this hard for me. Now I can find ways to tie that into my life and other reoccuring patterns, and how I get disheartened easily and eventually quit everything I start, but I'll leave that up to another day. I'm not going to overthink for a minute.

I don't know where this post was going. Oh whatever. I had a lot of fun writing it. LOL

Happy New Year,
Love
The Dynasty