Looking Towards Some Sort of Future

I’m going through a breakup. I’ve only written two entries on this website, so if you’ve read those, this shouldn’t be anything new. If you haven’t, welcome to a blog where I so far, have mostly whined about being single.

I started writing on this website so that I would be able to improve. Improve my writing, improve my thought process and how I build my arguments, and generally improve who am I as a person. I have heard that journalling is good for figuring out who you are as a person, and for working through things without having to go see someone. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against seeing a therapist and currently see one myself. But I am journalling because not all of the work can be done in a therapy session. At some point, you need to start implementing some of the practices taught or discovered in therapy.

Truman Capote once said that journalism can be taught, but creative writing cannot be. At the time when I heard that, I didn’t quite understand what he meant. To me, then, creative writing was something you could take a class for; you could even receive a university degree in creative writing. So how could it not be taught? I’ve come to understand creative writing as something that is intrinsic to someone’s being. Either you have it, or you don’t. Good creative writing evokes pictures and images to spring into mind as the writer weaves the story. I wish that I had that ability. I read authors such as Sarah Hepola and fantasize about being able to write like she does. But I can’t, and if I believe what Capote had to say about creative writing, I never will.

But I will not stop trying to become a better writer, and that what this blog is about. I’m not terribly concerned if people end up reading what I have to write or if people end up caring about what I write, I just need some place to do it. Some people might ask why I am writing online if I’m ambivalent as to whether or not people read what I write? In that case, why not just write on Word or Pages on my desktop? Well, because writing online like this creates some sort of obligation. I can at least convince myself that there are some people reading these words and I need to keep writing in order to keep my promise to myself to become a better writer and to keep the promise to them that I will keep writing in pursuit of that goal. There’s no motivation to write if it is just on my desktop, I have done that before and it didn’t work out.

So, here I promise to myself and to anyone reading this — I will keep writing so that I may become a better writer. I can’t promise that anything that I write will be good or interesting, it may just end up being a place for me to whine about the struggles I am going through as I progress through a breakup that I didn’t want to happen, even if I am the one who initiated it. I also promise to work on run-on sentences, because I am really bad with those. A small part of me hopes that people will read this and some small following will amass waiting on a new post by me, but I am also self-aware enough to understand that it probably won’t, and this is a daydream.

Anyways, welcome to WoodTrimApartment. I can be kind of depressing, and also boring.