I suppose the title gave it away a
bit. I have never blogged in my
life. In fact, the entire world of
blogging, if there is such a thing, is somewhat of a mystery to me. I do not regularly read blogs, and the only
time I can recall consciously looking at a blog was during a brief romantic
entanglement with a girl who regularly used a blog site.
Actually as far as social media
goes I suppose I could be considered somewhat of a dinosaur. The only social media site for which I have
an account is facebook, and I check my page all of once every three months or so,
when my parents or grandmother, who all use facebook more regularly than I,
post something involving me.
Then again, I still correspond
using the postal service (perhaps calling it 3d mail would make it seem more
modern). I’m sure social media has it’s
uses for some people, and perhaps this intensive crash course will convert me,
but I am stubborn and taciturn, so I have my doubts.
Now that I’ve got that confession
out of the way, it’s time for another one.
I’m not going to write about my favorite books because I don’t like
picking favorites. I don’t even have a
favorite color, so I’d have a difficult time choosing books, and sometimes
books we don’t like can have as much of an impact on us as books we enjoy. Sometimes more.
Instead, I’ll write about my
writing regimen. Where to begin? I don’t really think of my writing regimen as
a regimen, and I suppose by strict definition it quite possibly might not
count. I don’t write as regularly as I
should or want, particularly lately.
I’ve always had a tendency to binge write, no matter what I’m
writing. Even this blog I’m writing all
in one sitting not much before it is due.
Perhaps the pressure aids in focusing my mind, I’m not sure. Maybe writing all at once ensures that my
thoughts are better organized and distinct, but if you’ve gotten this far in
the blog you’ll realize that that might not be entirely true. If you skipped down and this part caught your
attention that doesn’t count. I really
don’t know why I tend to binge write, but so far it’s worked out all right for
me, just lead to some long and stressful nights.
But for as much as I tend to do the
actual writing all at once, I often spend a long time preparing, figuring out
what I’m going to say. I like to justify
it by relating it to chopping down trees.
Rather than spending six hours here and there hacking at the trunk with
a dull blade, I spend five sharpening the axe and then chop the tree down all
at once. I’ve no idea if that’s accurate
at all, but I’m still here and I’m still in school, so it can’t be that
bad.
Yet this is a novel writing class,
and you can’t binge write a novel, right?
To a degree, that is accurate.
There’s no way I could write an entire novel in one sitting. But it is possible, and I’ve done this
before, to binge write sections. And
it’s not entirely restricted to writing ten pages in one sitting, but sometime
I won’t write much for a couple of months even and then I’ll have a break and
write forty pages in a couple of days. It
works, sort of. But I’m not sure it’s
entirely healthy, either for me or the book.
That’s one thing I’m hoping this
class will help me with. It’s easy to
get distracted, especially when you’re double majoring and both of the majors require
an intense amount of out of class work, in very different ways. Last semester was hectic and
disorganized. This semester I’m hoping
to develop a regimen for more than just my writing.
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