A different side to writing...

I am not confident to begin with. At all. I didn’t even used to let myself think about being a writer. But now I did it. I let myself hope. Now I’m doubting and redoubting myself over that. I realized just how much I want to be a writer and can only see how much I am not one. 

Today I heard again about how important it is to love words. And now I am at a place where I question my motives. Even if I was able to convince myself that I loved language, loved stringing word after word after word together forming sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters, and books, even then, would I really actually love it or would I have just talked myself into it, would I just be acting? Playing out a life that is not my own? 

I already feel like such an impostor. I don’t tell that many people that I want to be a writer–and I do want it, more badly than I can ever hope to say–because I am so crippled by a fear of failing. Of being discovered. Found out. Uncovered. Thrown out. I don’t belong. I never will. It’s just a question of how long it will take others to discover the same thing. And this process could become severely more complicated if I succeed in fooling myself along the way. How can I continue? Is there any way to become what I dream of even though I am not that person now?

One of my friends brought up a really interesting point. He said he thought that there were two approaches to writing. One is to string words together to form ideas and the other is to have ideas and to wrap words around those ideas. This makes perfect sense to me! Instead of loving words I love ideas. Stringing thoughts together to form ideas to form concepts to form plots to form stories to form books. And I try wrap some words around all of those. Then I go back and reevaluate and rewrap the words in order to be truer to the ideas. Then set it down and come back later and reread it to see if I was able to clearly communicate my thoughts and if not, try to work more with the words–the tools–so that it is clearly communicated. It is a different approach, I admit, but I would argue that it is not one to be immediately discounted.

Writing

    I've probably said this before, but let me say it again: more than anything else in the world, I WANT TO WRITE! I don't know how else to say it. I don't care if I ever get published or not, I just want to write.
    Today I learned that there are two reasons that a writer writes. The first is to discover and the second is because they are a lover of words and language. And they write for both reasons. This was hard for me to hear in light of this morning's (oh irony of ironies!) blog post that I am not in love with words the way that other people are in love with words. I asked, "Is there something wrong with me?" YES!!! Very wrong! What do I need to do about it? The person speaking went on to talk about the technical side of writing and how that is a tool in the telling of the story, because the writer's control is through language. I don't mind that. I think it's cool even. I will readily admit that I do not know the craft and I would love to learn it. But I'm not a "lover of words." Language, maybe. But not words in and of themselves. Unless I'm saying that I don't like birds, but I like eagles. Is that what I'm doing? Am I just calling it another name, approaching it from a different side? Am I being completely immature? Are the other would-be-writers in the class the wise ones here? Do they have this mystical appreciation for the words that I lack? Am I in the wrong? Is this wrong redeemable? Or am I just being ridiculous? I don't know.
    I want to pursue this craft, but my problem with words seems to denounce me before I even really begin in earnest. Destining me to a life of trying without success. And by success I AM NOT referring to making the New York Times best seller list, or any amount of publishing at all. Like I said before, that is not my goal. I just want to write stories, to discover the characters as I go. Writing for the sake of writing. And I don't know how.
    Something else that was said was that "Writing takes the confidence to be able to fail." This raises another problem for me. This may also be another bird/eagle rationalizing craziness deal. Confidence and courage. I know I lack both of these in my writing. Not in the writing itself. I may or may not write with an air of confidence, I wouldn't know because I don't know the technical side of writing! But I lack confidence in my writing because it is mine. I don't really let myself think of myself as a "writer" and therefore have pretty much no expectations for myself. (On the other hand, why am I deliberating over this whole deal if I have no expectations? Maybe I do have expectations. Ridiculously high ones that I am only subconsciously aware of enough to completely paralyze me and make me ask a ton of weird questions.) In other words, whichever scenario is true, I expect to fail. I don't want to fail though. Drat. I just admitted to a fear of failure. Guess I have a lot to learn.
    One of the other things said was that being a writer takes practice. Lots of practice. And apprenticeship. And seemingly endless training. And after you've trained and trained and trained, then you can take it and make it your own. And you know what? It still sounds totally worth it to me.

Words

    I've noticed something about myself in comparison to the other would-be-writers in my class. They love words. Adore words. I don't. Not for their own sake anyway. These people love the word just for being a word. I have never been a great speller (seriously, according to standardized tests my spelling abilities plateaued at the sixth grade level!). The only reason I can spell is because of how much I've read. I don't set out to get a big vocabulary for the sake of getting a large vocabulary. I don't mind a large vocabulary because of what I can then do with it–the doors it opens up, how much better you can tell a story. For this reason, sometimes my friends may hear me asking everybody I can think of for a particular word, when I have an image in mind but can't come up with the word to describe it. But even then, it's not because I love that word. I just want to do the picture or idea in my head justice. I have one friend who has the fantastic gift of crafting phrases that I wish I could eat. Is that because I delight in the words themselves? No! It is because I relish the the images, the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures that I know will flood my mind when I read what she writes. Is it possible for one who writes for the love of writing, the adventure of the story unfolding, etc. to not be in love with words themselves?