Tuesday 4 May 2010

Scary writing

Writing a blog post however short is a lot of work. It starts in the morning, as soon as I wake up. I browse through the events and conversations of the past few days. I look around for topics when I bike to the station. I look and listen to people at the station and in the train. I look for topics in the morning paper, at work and on the internet. But most of all, I look at myself. Everything that happens to me is a potential topic for a blog post.

Experience and feedback from my readers show that the latter source of inspiration provides for most exciting posts. People often tell me it's very brave to share such personal topics just like that on the internet where everyone can see them. How do I manage to get that personal? It's simple. Every time I share something very personal, I get a lot of response and positive feedback. I like it. I want more. So I look for more personal stuff to write. I might refrain from writing something personal only for two reasons: it's too explicit to be good or it can hurt someone.

Yesterday I made a big deal of going to the hairdresser and was happy I did, because that gave me something to write about. I even suspect myself of getting a new hairdo just for the sake of this blog. I look at my life as a pool of blog topics. Often this approach helps to get through difficult moments of my life.

But now I have a feeling it won't take long before I live my life for the sake of being able to write a good story. I seem to encourage the events to happen. Which wouldn't be a problem if it only were happy moments and funny adventures. But the truth is: the best stories are made of pain. Even the funny ones. The more it hurts, the better the story. The other day I was struck by a question that popped up in my head: what will I write about when I get a steady relationship?

So I basically walk around looking for pain to be able to write. Pain is a welcome guest in my house. And I suspect this is also the reason pain keeps coming. There is nothing I do to avoid it, to go out of its way, to make it lighter, more bearable. No. Instead I poke around in my feelings till I feel enough to start writing.

Here I am again. Hurting. It's too late to turn back. There's nothing I can do now to soothe the pain. I have to go through it. It would be a good time to start writing the pain down. Except, somehow I get cold feet. I'm simply afraid to write about this. I could make it worse, though, to get a better story...

Hot Chip - Hand Me Down Your Love (it's just a song I like, there's no hidden message in it)

1 comment:

  1. "Il n'est pas bon d'être malheureux, mais il est bon de l'avoir été."

    ReplyDelete

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