I must confess, I've never written my thoughs in this blog-like manner before. Yes, I studied Spanish and Literature so during university I wrote quite a lot... but never anything beyond the academic speech. Never anything too personal or even fictional.

I tried, tho, with journals and what not; but along the way I decided that I was bad at it, so I stopped. (I think that's one of my biggest flaws. If I think I'm not good enough at something at first try, I stop pushing).

I have very high standars for my work, so whenever I'm writing I find myself cringing at my inhability to make words play out smoothly (In my mother tongue, mostly). It doesn't "flow", it sounds flat, It's plain and dull... Ultimately, all those thoughts lead me to quit trying and dozens of stories end up in the trash bin.

However, I always come back because I feel a weird pressure to be good at it. Why? maybe because it's quite literally what my whole career is about. But beyond that, I feel very passionate about stories and words. I love that feeling you get when you read such a well constructed sentence that it forces you look at an empty space and go: "wow...". I want to evoke wows.

                    

Personally, I've never found real placer in writing, like I do with other arts. I love to draw, and I love to play music; but I don't actually "love" the process of writing as much as I love the feeling of having written. The acomplishment of it.

Which is a little bit problematic since you can't get to point b without passing point a.

It wasn't until a few weeks ago when I was listening to some indie-folk song with sad lyrics and suddently I felt inspired. A story was building in my mind and I wanted to give it a try.

I was so eager to start that I simply googled: "site to write", and then clicked on the second link. Like opening floodgates, it all poured out. I ended up with what it seemed the chapter 2 of a story with no end or beggining.

I was proud, and more importaly, I liked it. So the next day I tried again. Sadly, the spell ended and I couldn't string two sentences together. It was the same for the next few days.

I didn't know what to do. Should I quit? I didn't think I could. I had 2k+ words worth of evidence that proved that I, in fact, can arrange words in an order that allows me to express ideas in a beautiful way.

That whole episode was a big lesson.

                                     

I had this misconception that lead me to believe that the process of writing is linear and with a steady pace. That if you're a "good writer" you produce good content all the time.

Pretty naive of me. I obviously knew. "Practice makes perfect" and all that jazz..., but it never clicked.

I'm now learning about my habilities and limits; learning to enjoy it more. I know I'm more productive at night when the only interruption is the sound of my CPU's cooling fans. (No joking, this pc sounds way louder than any normal computer ever should). A black backgroud helps, too; no music; and so on...

As I said in my "introduce myself" post, using another language also makes it easier. I feel less attached to my final product, so I can avoid (for the most part) the anxiety-inducing experience that comes from sharing my words with strangers and reading their opinions and criticism. I've learned to not be so hard on myself. 

I'm letting myself be a bad writer. How exhilarating.