EPIC

There are a number of factors that have made this j-term writing alternately successful and murderous.

I was sick- Sick became a reason to hole up in my room and write. It also made writing hard because I didn’t feel well and the computer screen was assaulting my eyes.

It sometimes felt like someone had their hands round my skull, applying pressure. NO!!!! The little people in my brain would scream. HELL NO!!!

Commander, she’s approaching her keyboard

Send the signal for TURN BACK

I can’t, her neural pathways won’t transmit.

Well.. uh… send.. send….

Yes Commander?

Send a chocolate craving! That’s it… Make her frantically search for chocolate until she forgets about the damn computer!

Sending transmissing sir. (pause)  

Commander! It worked.

I knew it would… ahh.. the beauty of women. Manipulation by PMS.

That happened sometimes.

Too often in fact.

 Other times, I was on the ball, absorbed, WRITING. I didn’t self edit all the time. Sure, I overused the dash a little and misspelled some words (relive, relieve/Relevation, revelation etc), the important thing is that I no longer feel lost in exposition- in the language of description. I feel like its okay to rant and write funny. To be caustic.

I wish I’d done a better job.

Maybe I should have stuck to the serious, the bittersweet and lovelorn.

There is a point however, when prompts from post cards of old bicycles stop triggering sepia memories. Instead, they bring falling. Beaches. Hot rods. Black boots. And, in Dickie’s case, a lady killing tricycle.  

I wanted to write so you could remove meaning and carry it. A guitar pick, a watch, a fragment of burnt air, purple sock anxiety, music, obsession, social responsibility, privilege, money- take whatever you want.

That was probably the hardest part- take whatever you want. Pillage my work.

On this blog, I had no privacy. You had access to all the things I would rather save in “jterm writing” in “my documents” until they are good- John Irving level or higher.

Without the luxury of only showing you the best, I showed you the whole instead. I’m sorry if I perturbed any of you with stories on imaginary deaths or my experience with lesbian erotica. But it’s true and it’s mine. I feel obligated to write about touchy things.

Now- multi media. It’s an impressive portion of the journey that Barbara has asked us to scribe. I don’t know if I will ever use it again as a “final project” component, but the multimedia aspect of our writing exercises was transformative. With an image to write on, everything became relevant. I was writing to something. The last person to hold this calendar or magazine. The lovely lady who wears a fur hat with orange lining. It gave me a sense of place. Time. Solid ground. Audience.

I promised myself I would stop writing in lists, but that obviously hasn’t happened.

The one major failure I had in this class was response. I’m a terrible blogger. I imagine that the network between some of us is thick and twined. Now that the outside connections are forming, these links are being cemented in something weirdly animate. I don’t quite know how to approach it yet. I feel like I’m on the border between the US and Mexico deciding whether it’s best to convert to another nationality. If I commit to this blog world, will I survive? Will I be on it all the time, correcting and commenting? Is that a bad thing? Will people be kind in their feedback? Will they bite? Now that J-term is over I’m kicking myself for not trying harder on that front. I want people to bite. I want to learn how to write.

Maybe I have a death wish.

That’s probably the biggest revelation I received from on high within the month. I have a death wish. I want to learn how to write.

I’ve taken multiple creative writing classes and blown through them with strings of four adjectives. I’ve settled for poetic. And you know what I want now?

I want to be understood.

So help me.

I’m going to try and stay on this blog (even though I’ve been neglecting it) and write, hoping for feedback.

Right guys- I’m done with this journey rant (and to think, this is only part I for BG to read)

Steady on- no horses spared.

Grammaticus.