Things to tell me about:
did i just talk to much about the works rather than the process
does it read well
did you like it
is it terrible
does my theme match the evidence i presented
suggest a conclusion maybe?
anything else you think . . .
you can ignore these and just go too

Note: I did not entirely finish but almost
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I flip open my lighter and torch a cigarette, dragging it hard until my lungs fill with smoke. For the next five minutes, I’ll smoke this cigarette as anyone else would, taking indulgent rips on the end of the filter until it is ready to be flicked from my finger tips. I won’t consciously think about each inhalation that I undergo every few dozen seconds anymore than I would of every other breath I take. My doing it just happens naturally in my mind and is implemented through my hands, out into the world. This is my writing process personified. I think about what I will write beforehand as much as I think about smoking that cigarette beforehand. I get a feeling that strikes me and I can’t shake it free. In the case of writing, that thought will be put on the page in the mood with which I found it. In the case of a cigarette, it’ll be smoked in the mood with which I desired it. Both methods are raw and emotion driven. And just like emotion, it cannot be controlled. It may be possible to control how one’s emotions are perceived by others; but, on the inside, no one can eradicate a feeling that’s washed over and hit them like a tidal wave. And as I dive into that emotional pool, a hunger to interpret what I feel creatively almost always appears; and then I write. If I feel raunchy, then it comes out as though my tongue is a whip. If I feel lonely, then it could be a personal arrangement of existential despair. No matter what it is I’m feeling or whatever mood I may be in, my writing reflects it in a way that is both narration and creation brought to life with the subconscious and direction.

For the five years or so that I have been interested in writing, and have essentially enjoyed it, it’s always been about the “doing” and not about planning at all. Any academic piece of writing I do, such as the Literacy Narrative, is essentially the product of flat out procrastination and then, the night before the paper is due, writing the whole thing out from start to finish only stopping so I may glance at the television. There is no prewriting and pre-thought is basically, but not entirely, non-existent. I will not dismiss the act of thinking before hand with academic writing, because I know it happens sometimes. On some occasions I will think about what I might do with an assignment when it’s being assigned, days before I write it, or even the hours leading up to when I know I’ll have to (usually the day before it’s due). With academic writing, it is written as though I were playing a game of Russian roulette, for I rarely proofread after I have completed either as I am just thrilled with the thought that I have finished the wretched thing and don’t have to touch it again. It may not be the best way to write for a grade, but I have been doing it this way for a very long time and can’t complain too much about the results.

I write creatively for personal reasons quite often. I typically keep a notebook on me at all times specifically for making sure I don’t let some idea I have go to waste by relying on my suspect memory. By far, the things I write the most are poem/songs. I lump them together because if I can play music as an accompaniment and recite or sing it, than it is a song. If can’t, then it is a poem. I’d say I will write down some line or a stanza of something about three times a day. I average a piece that I like and go back to or play about once a week. That’s not to say I get good things once a week but rather, some block of days I’ll get as many as three or four things I complete and deem as acceptable and then I will go a month without doing anything worth noting.

The process I go through for poems/songs is the best representation of my writing process as a whole. Around Thanksgiving this past year, I had been drinking lightly and was hanging around the fringes of being drunk. It was late and I sat down in bed and picked up my notebook, for I had a case of “Mama, you’ve been on my mind” for a lovely young lady I had been spending time with. I knew I had to get something out on the page and all of it just came to me fairly quickly. The first thing I wrote, “Your smile greets me like the sunrise on my doorstep,” stayed as the first line of the piece and I wrote the rest accordingly, stopping only to get the right word or phrasing here and there. I’d say the whole thing, totaling about 20 lines took just under ten minutes. I then set my book down and went about the rest of my night. Afterwards, I did ditch the whole last stanza but the rest of the piece remains untouched, except for the last line of the first verse. With this work, I simply tapped into a mood I felt strongly and interpreted it as poignantly as I could with a pen and paper. Furthermore, I do believe that the slight amount of alcohol in my system did help the process by allowing me to eliminate and self-consciousness that I would have with my own words. It sort of “lubricated” the composition of the piece.

My writing process is no stranger to different substances one would use to seek inspiration. One of the more significant pieces (significant to me that is) I’ve written came along under the influence of relatively popular “vegetable.” I was over a friends house well into the morning hours before finally heading home. When I finally arrived I immediately grabbed that same notebook and went to work. Filled with a particular feeling of determination and a desire for self growth, I wrote a very personally powerful piece. It is entirely driven by two things: 1) my need to “turn a corner” as a person and 2) the emotion that had derived from the influence I was under and the thoughts that influence had provoked. Like the aforementioned piece, “A Transition” was composed in entirely one attempt and although I have tried to improve upon it since, I have lacked the ability to find anything better to include or replace other lines with. It is as though my ability to feel the way I felt in that moment or perhaps even to be that version of myself that I was died the moment I deemed the piece finished and closed my notebook and walked away from it. Even in the case revising an already existing piece, my ability to create things I am satisfied with has never been something I can tap into.

Beyond poems/songs, I also like writing short stories here and there. One that really sticks out in my mind was about my father dying five or so years down the road and how I would deal with it. I wrote this about a year ago in two separate sittings (that’s a real big deal in my case) about half a week apart. The piece totals about 5000 words. Overall, I like what the story does but I can’t stand the ending. I’d also like to fill it out more if possible. I’ve tried to do both (especially change that horrific ending) around a dozen times I’d say over the past 12 months. I can’t get anything at all. Everything that I have gone and done to it has been awful. Where the original is so full of that raw emotion and mood I’ve been going on about, every revision has this fake, Disney feel like I’m writing for twelve year olds. I can’t get any of the realness that I sought after and attained in the original. There is the one segment where I describe my brother picking me up from the train station and how neither of us are talking about what’s actually happened and why I’m home. I’ve tried to put dialogue in it and it just never takes. It’s like oil and water.