Wednesday, April 23

phew!




I have lot on my plate right now, so haven't been blogging - not that I really work on my assignments all of the time I sit in front of the computer, but blogging when I should be writing something else makes me feel guilty. I've been missing blogging though, so I'll probably post about everything I've been wanting to in a few days (i.e. nothing of great importance, as usual). Like last Sunday's post I didn't seem to have time to finish until today.
A short story for a writing course has been getting most of my attention. For me, creative writing is scary, since I don't think I'm very good at it, and this blog has been the most creative thing I've been writing in a long while (I used to keep a journal, but don't anymore). Top that with a fairly bad case of fear of the blank page (or screen). So I wasn't so happy about this assignment - but mysteriously, this time writing was almost easy at times, and I'm quite pleased with my little story.


(But thank heavens for the spell check in Word - as you may have noticed, I'm pretty lazy to keep an eye on whether I'm writing in British or American English while blogging, though it would probably be useful, and I feel bad about not doing it; but we had to mark all the assignments for our course as UK or US - and write in both language variants - and the little things like writing gray instead of grey escape me easily. Ok, enough about this rambling.)





Although there's been nothing after those rainy photos in my blog, we've had the perfect spring weather - sunny and windy - for several days in a row (I'm knocking wood here). The wind has been quite chilly, but it's lovely to wake up seeing sun and blue sky. It makes all this studying more a lot more bearable! Even though I don't really feel like going to a windowless classroom to write when it's sunny outside...

Last but not least, thank you for all your comments, once again! They've made my day, really. And thank you friends who do not comment, it's still nice to know you're there. :)




*And look, an abundance of brackets! Or parentheses, if you like that word more. I think it's my most common mistake when writing. Tai siis tarkoitan, että helmasyntini. En keksinyt sopivaa käännöstä. Helmasynti on hyvä sana!

4 comments:

heidi said...

Tuo tyhjän paperin kammo on kovin tuttu. Olen pitänyt oikein hyvänä vastalääkkeenä sitä, että alan kirjoittaa aluksi ajatuksenvirtaa täysin kritiikittä. Yleensä siitä kuitenkin tulee jotain, mihin tarttua kiinni. Ja vaikkei tulisi, paperi (ruutu) ei ole enää tyhjä.

Uskon, että olet varmaankin hyvä kirjoittamaan luovaa tekstiä. Sellainen näkyy läpi. Ainoa ongelma voi tietysti olla, jos on joku sellainen huono kokemust taustalla, joka on vienyt uskon itseen ja joka vie ilon kirjoittamisesta.

mansuetude said...

i'm fascinated about what went on inside you while writing your story--a creative writing assignment is almost the first time students are given permission to write from a freedom inside themselves; to use a voice that is not an "authority" outside them.

Words are older than all the so called writing teachers... if we were to listen to our own inner voice, and claim words as our gift, and not give our power away to cerrtain old school "writing teachers" and their petty little comas and quotation marks, we would have a greater dialogue and a more varied stylistic use of words.

I hope this makes some small sense. I hope you keep all writing in mind as creative, too.

scaredy-cat said...

Heidi, olen itsekin alkanut kokeilla tuota, että kirjoittaa vaan. Luova kirjoittaminen on varmaan siksikin hankalaa minulle, että vuosiin en ole tuottanut sellaista, ainakaan kenenkään muun luettavaksi.

Mansuetude, I'm really surprised (pleasantly) from that whole process; I had few ideas ready and tried to work on them, but then this story came out of nowhere and just poured out of me (and I can't say it was exactly anything from my personal history; except maybe it was, in some way I don't even know myself). I was having some problems deciding whether to allow myself freedom when it comes to correct writing or not; I think it's a matter of style too, and one should not always look at the commas and such - but on the other hand I know the professor is very precise and I saw myself arguing with him whether something is allowed or not... We'll see what he thinks about the story. :)

mansuetude said...

my first creative writing story assignment changed so much inside me--it was like falling in love (but i didn't understand it yet)! Sounds like it was good for you too!