Storytime! I’ve always liked writing and English is my favourite subject. When I tell people this, they usually follow up with the line “Oh, so you must like books and write really well.” The liking books part is true, but the writing is very much so the opposite. I don’t think I write well, but I do it anyways because I enjoy it. I’ve been to writing classes, and they’ve always been fun. My writing teacher’s name was Emer and she was really nice, always giving us good advice. She gave us advice one day about drafts and writing. Am I allowed to curse on this blog? Probably not. To be honest that’s not really my thing and the lads will back me up on that. Basically she said that first drafts were usually really, really, really, really bad. Did I agree with that? Not necessarily.
When I was going to those groups and was a year or two younger my mother always asked me if writing was something I wanted to do, and I always said no. Imagine being a well known author writing the best selling books. I guess it would be your job, to write. Jobs usually have deadlines and projects that need the be handed in. You can’t slack off. Imagine a well known author in a situation like me where they are writing about their cheese sandwiches (which I have now finished and was very nice), stress and about how they just can’t write. That just takes the fun out of it. At least for me it would. Having to reach a certain amount of words or chapters before a certain day? Sign me out. I like these blog posts, however, because you can write whatever you want. Heck, I could have written a sentence and posted that up and technically it would still be considered a blog post. Would I get killed by Mr. O’ Mahony? Probably, but I could just say that it was poetic license.
That’s another thing too! Writing doesn’t have to be correct. It doesn’t have to be a really long story or an amazing one. It can be whatever and still be amazing. There’s this poet I really like called Rupi Kaur. She wrote ‘Milk and Honey’ which is a collection of extremely short poems, but still hit home in most cases. Some are only one sentence long but still say just as much as a poem as long as Robert Frost’s Mending Wall. Like, calm down Frost. You could have literally said something like. “These walls divide us, these walls we keep” or something like that and it still would have been good. Not that it was good anyway.
Storytime 2.0! While talking about writing to someone before and I told them that my spelling wasn’t great. ‘Wasn’t great’ was an exaggeration on my part, and she knew this too. I was slower with spelling. I do this thing where I write the word with my finger on the nearest solid surface and spell it out that way. She replied in a way I never thought I’d ever hear from anyone but myself.
“So you have the creativity, you just don’t have the ability to write it.”
I went gobsmacked and I was nearly in tears. This was around the time that I went to my writing classes, and seriously felt like quitting. She looked at me as if she was waiting for me to say that yes, I was indeed a bad writer and it is such a sin. ‘I’m not bad, I just need some more work, maybe a bit more practice’ is what I would have said to her if I wasn’t so taken back by it. She then followed on to tell me that Journalism would be a good career option to keep in mind.
When I finished that paragraph I scrolled up to the top again to read over this post once more, and I laughed a little at what I had written to be honest. Quote; “I don’t think I write well.”
I think that comment may still affect me to this day? People tend to say I’m a sensitive person. What I’m trying to get at I suppose is that first drafts may be really, really, really, really bad, but at least they can be funny. So, no Emer, first drafts are not always bad. No, person I will name unnamed, I can write and I will write whatever I want and no, I will not go into Journalism. I was going to go back and edit this, but then I decided against it. I’m leaving this as a first draft. For once I’m proud of my little first draft, even if it is indeed a really, really, really bad one.
C.F