Lessons I'm Learning

  Writing is definitely a learning process. Not just style and grammar either. In the few  months I’ve been writing, I’ve changed the way I write. It’s much more structured now.
       Something I’m learning is how important it is to write with the internet turned off!  Between youtube, CritiqueCircle,  my blog roll and CNN (no, not the intelligent stuff, sadly) I can dick away hours and get zero writing done. But once I disconnect the internet, it’s like Boom! Take off!
       It’s also important to know more or less what I’m going to write about. Staring at a blank page is more terrifying for me than exciting. Is that wrong? I remember when I was looking at university programs and totally intimidated by the situation and my father couldn’t understand why. “This is exicting,” he said, “you can choose anything...blahdiblahblahblah”. And you know what Dad? No, it wasn’t. It was awful.
It’s like that with a blank page too. What if I start with the wrong premise, what if it leads to a bad place that I can’t get out of, what if everything just falls to shit and I quit before I can finish. And sure, you can go back, fix some things, make adjustments, but you can never really start again can you?
        I also know, that for sure I can't listen to music. When there's a good song on, I just can't concentrate on something else. For instance, if I'm driving in the car and a good song comes on, it's a huge pet peeve of mine if someone wants to talk during it. So, unless I listen to boring music, tunes are out of the question. And really, who wants to go out of their way to find boring music to listen to?
Maybe I’m putting too much thought into this. And no, writing is not really as stressful as I make it sound. At least not always. I’m still just beginning.