Written by: TheLatentGeek on 28 May 2011 @ 9:18 pm

First writing post of the blog!

For as long as I can remember, I have loved words. I was the kid who read street and store signs from the backseat, annoying my parents and grandparents with a constant flow of billboard advertisements excitedly reproduced in a four-year-old voice. Words hold special meaning for me, even really random ones, like “moist” or “orange” have some memory attached to them, some connection to the makeup of my personality. My favorite word is “exsanguination,” (which is apparently not in the WordPress dictionary). The simple fact is, if you pulled a loose thread from my foot, and my outer shell completely fell away like Oogie Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas, then you’d find me completely composed of words.

So why is this at all relevant? Why is it even remotely interesting that The Latent Geek likes the sound of a gruesome word like “exsanguination?” Because, ya’ll, academia has totally stolen away my soul. A decade of college has reduced me to a single word, and I couldn’t even tell you what that word actually is.
Yes, Folks, I, TLG, have discovered the secret cure for that disease called “wanting to be a writer:” College.

More specifically, that devil called the English Major.

You would think all that reading of great literature and those classes learning that “reading of great literature” is passive voice would be helpful, encouraging to the fledgling writer. But you’d be wrong.

I could waste thousands more words complaining about the soul-sucking institution of higher learning, but I’ll spare you that. The real point of this post (besides that —>.) is that I need help regaining my soul, rebuilding my collection of words.

I can write mindless non-fiction, I can write criticisms until my fingers disintegrate, I can type and retype your work and edit it to a perfect, publishable state. But I can’t, for the life of me, get any of the millions of tiny tidbits and fragments in my head to congeal and become a solid idea. I’m not even asking for an award-winner, no instantaneous success, just something akin to that skin on top of Jell-O that’s been in the fridge for too long.

How do I regain my writing brain? I so badly want an idea, just something to occupy the little Bartleby in my brain that spits out those random phrases and inklings that get jotted down in a Moleskine. But every time I try to think of what to write, to refrigerate my Jell-O, as it were, I feel like I’m trying to lick my elbow (seriously, you should try it!).

Its getting a little easier since I’ve de-academia-ed my life a little, my Jell-O is turning out edible, but soupy, like maybe you should drink it through a straw. I did write one little piece of really useless, circular flash-fiction inspired by something my friend Matt said. But I felt mostly unsatisfied. Maybe it was clever, but it was very shallow and really had no action in it to speak of, unless you count queuing as action (I guess the late Douglas Adams would count queuing as action…)

But I’m still miles away from figuring out what to write, say, for NaNoWriMo, which I know is five months away, but that’s really not that long. I’d really like to spend the time between now and then hashing out the Jell-O skin idea into something closer to runny eggs before I hit November 1, not to mention all the real-life stuff going on between now and then.

So, I’ll wrap this up. Any ideas on what to do?

Tags: Writing

Catogories: Writing