The half-examined life

[elfs]

Today, in a completely different fora from LJ, fallenpegasus mentioned his habit of collecting beautifully bound blank books but a reluctance to, as he put it, "do anything so gauche as to actually write in one."

I have the opposite problem. Every blank book I buy is a new promise that I shall write, or draw, or compose, or equate, something beautiful, something wonderful, something that will really be meaningful. Or perhaps it's a notebook into which I shall pour everything I learn as I study Kanji, or music, or emacs. And then, after a while, the book is battered and the crisp white edge greyed with the grease of too many fingerprints, the insides stained here and there with coffee, and the promise of the book is faded as it fills with unanswered problems, shoddy perspectives, crude doodles, crossed-out paragraphs.

All of my blank books end up only half-full. Like my writing career.

Oddly, though, writing is the one thing I keep doing. I keep hacking at it, hoping someday I'll get it right, I'll feel like my voice has arrived, my style is strong, my command of the language adequate. In the meantime, I'll keep soldiering on.

Comments

[musyc]

All of my blank books end up only half-full.

Ooh, don't I know *that* feeling. I've got stacks of notebooks and piles of pens, but they never get used.

[arlon.livejournal.com]

Would you rather leave behind a battered half filled book with coffee stains and scribblings, or a beautiful one that says nothing about who you are?

[fallenpegasus]

Ouch. I am cut to the quick. But, it's a fair cop.

[arlon.livejournal.com]

Ack, i've been found out!

No offense was meant. I hope none was taken. There are many ways to leave your legacy. Elf just does it with scribblings and stories.

Thats lovely ^_^

[kyriani.livejournal.com]

I always seem to half fill my writing journals or half-finish the stories I write, but I always seem to overfill my sketchbooks. I often wonder what that says about me. ;)

[vamp-ire.livejournal.com]

I tend to pick up rather cheap blank books, not really caring so much about the design. I'm generally concentrating on the amount and size of the pages. I have a bunch that are full, although what I tend to put in them is entirely private. I haven't purchased one in a long time now, since I started feeling more at home typing on notepads on a computer.

I've read your work for quite awhile, so you can count me amongst the fans that are happy that you write at all (half full books or not).

I have found that my own writing is currently going through a dry spell, which is upsetting me a lot. I'm used to having stories flow from me, but I think that when I threatened my muse with the concept of actually getting organized enough to put together a novel outside of the genre I usually write in there was internal rebellion! haha.

Vamp:)=

Writing dry spells...

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I don't have that problem. I have the opposite: producing reams and reams of crap that have no business calling themselves writing. It's that kind of discouragement that leads to abandoned notebooks. One of the reasons I was happy to switch to the laptop: at least my mistakes don't clutter up the directory listing. They just get deleted.