This morning I happened to stop by my local bookstore after nipping into the pharmacy for some essentials. Something I’ve done many times before – this time they even had a sale on the 2nd book – lovely.
2 books later, I’m off home, having unassumingly picked up Stephanie Vanderslice’s book – .The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life: An Instructional Memoir for Prose Writers. I had no particular reason for picking this book up, except that lingering feeling of something left undone, a loose end still needing tying.
Turns out that a couple of years ago, I went through a similar phase of ‘writing’ exploration. I always liked reading and writing in English in Secondary school, but my later academics took me very far from the classical languages and into the area of information systems and technology. What could be further away from writing, right?
Nevertheless, I’ve always been bothered by this nagging feeling that I should be putting down words somewhere. Counteracting this feeling though, is the even bigger sensation that I have no business putting words to paper (or keyboard), and that I should leave this to people who have been writing their whole lives, and chose career paths that reflect this. This becomes even more apparent to me every time I come across anything I’ve written in the past. You know when you see yourself in a video from 5 years ago and wonder what on earth possessed you to wear that shirt, or how you could ever think that going out in those pants made you look good? It’s a similar feeling I find, looking at my previous articles.
That said, I wonder, is this something every writer naturally goes through? The self doubt and self criticism that makes one want to dispel thoughts of ‘writing’ into the abyss of pipedreams. Three chapters into Ms Vanderslice’s book, she is already treating this issue. Luckily, or unluckily for me, she advocates that one should be one’s own judge on whether they should keep writing or not. I’m not entirely sure this helps me gain confidence or face reality, but since we’re mentioning confidence, I should say I am a stark introvert, with generally a low confidence in my own ‘performing’ abilities. I use the word ‘performing’ purposefully here. I regard writing as an art, and therefore a process that produces something that is ultimately showcased. I do not regard myself as a low confidence person in general. I consider myself quite confident in other areas in my life – my job, my friendships, the role I play within my family – but when it comes to ‘performing’, this has always been an area of low confidence for me. I guess this explains my hesitation at displaying any written work to the world.
But, as I mentioned a bit earlier, a couple of years ago I did. I had almost forgotten about it. We live in an age where we create so many online accounts on this website and the other, that it becomes easy to forget all of our memberships. In 2016, I had created a WordPress blog. I remember it was around the time of the Brexit referendum in the UK, and no doubt this had sparked some of my articles. I revisited that blog today, and even went through the forgot password process to gain access to my dashboard. A couple of hundred views over 2 years – nothing worth mentioning.
Reading my previous work, I can’t say I’m ashamed, but clearly after 5 articles I stopped writing. I did not stick to it, and this is another point Stephanie Vanderslice brings up – the need for reserved time for writing. I remember having set aside time in the first couple of weeks – but clearly I did not keep this up.
That said, I am here now, writing this post as a resurfacing if you will. I write it for no one in particular except myself, if only to show myself that in 2019 I restarted this effort to write.
make it a double 