Just Ranting

I had told myself to post five times within May, but of course, I did not do it. I did not even post once. I’m sick of being lazy. I want to develop my writing skills. I want to practice and finally reach my goal, to write a novel or at least a novella, it does not matter.

What is it that is keeping me from starting? I used to tell myself that I was busy with my studies especially that this semester was tough, but I knew that that was just an excuse. I always blame it on laziness, but that is also an excuse. I ought to stop procrastinating and start doing what I am supposed to do. I’ve been telling myself that for ages, but I still don’t write. I don’t even know how I pushed myself to write this bit of rant right now.

A while ago, I found some books of a professor who teaches at my university. I also found a book by an author younger than me as well as a book with horrible English Grammar. You cannot imagine how proud I was with those people. They did what I am dreaming to do. Despite the simplicity of the first’s novels, the other’s age, and the latter’s poor grammar, each succeeded to publish at least one book. I am so proud of these people.

But what am I doing? Why am wasting time? If I keep doing this I will never be able to develop. The years will pass in a flash and then I’ll lie in my deathbed without accomplishing my dream.

I know it is not my studies or my laziness that is stopping me. It is something else. It is fear. It feels strange now that I forced myself to see the true cause. I always knew I was afraid to write, but I did not allow myself to think of it that way; instead, I gave myself excuses.

I am not sure when I started to be so scared of writing? I remember the first time I started writing, back when I was in middle school. I discovered the existence of forums and somehow ended up reading some stories there. I got addicted. Most stories were extremely simple. Most of them were pages and pages of dialogues, and I was not bothered by that at all. I wanted to write just like them, so I wrote pages and pages of dialogues myself. After a while, I learned to write paragraphs instead and then I seemed to have forgotten how to write dialogues and make characters interact. Soon I learned the art of editing. I wrote and wrote for the love of writing not noticing that all the time I spent wasting ink and paper, which my mother nagged at me to throw away, I was actually practicing and developing my writing skill.

When did it all go wrong? When did my love of writing turn to fear? It could be because of the books I read. Sometimes as I read, I think that I could never reach the level that those authors reached. I wanted to be like them immediately, out of the blue. But I know that they spent a lifetime to reach it, it is not easy. Another possibility is because I don’t have anyone to read my stories. Not many read here and not many speak English. Even now that I finally found friends who speak English, I cannot force them to read my stupidity. There is practically nobody to tell me if I am good or I am bad. Not to mention, I am too afraid of being told that I am bad. That will be discouraging, and I am not exactly that motivated to write.

Besides fear, I seem to have forgotten how writing fiction works. I think I created some sort of boundary until I could not even think of any idea to write. A boundary like I shouldn’t write something like this, this is not interesting, this is not down to earth enough... etc. This is another thing that I developed over time. The first time I started writing, I didn’t care about anything. I let my imagination run wild. It is fiction after all. It is not real, and it does not have to work the same way reality works. I could twist it and play with it as I want, it is my playground. Plus, I will learn these things over time, why rush?

I know all of this, yet I cannot seem to be able to write anything. Sometimes I am tempted to extract a passage from my journal, edit it and post it, but I do not want to do that. I do not want to resort to sharing my boring stupid life although I don’t mind, as that is how this blog started from the beginning. I want to write stories. I want to write different types of genres. I want to experiment. I want to do a lot of things, but if I don’t start doing them, I will just keep wanting.

I apologize for the waste of time, but I really needed to get this off my chest. I also apologize for not posting those five posts, I shouldn’t have promised something I couldn’t do. Thank you for reading all the way to the end. It makes me feel like my words aren’t that unimportant. Some people care. Also, very sorry that this was just a rant instead of a story. I keep taking long breaks and then come back with nothing. I am so disappointing aren’t I?