dinsdag 11 juni 2013

Finding a reason to talk

When I started this little blog last year, it was to practice my writing in order to have a bit of a portfolio for my future career in column-writing. It quickly became clear that my future probably wouldn’t be in the column business, though, and my interest faded pretty quickly. It was pretty clear that my reason to talk, or write, was lacking, to say the least.

Coming to terms with that, I realized that I wasn’t even that sad about the sudden silence I had allowed to fall, but that didn’t mean my surroundings were going to let me live it down. My father had started writing, mostly about the bike vacation he had taken with my mother to the several middle points of our country, and seeing him write day after day, working on what can only be described as ‘articles’, was actually something that made me think about starting to write again and upload it. My family was actually starting to push me, as well, hoping for me to actually put something down again, but I might have pushed back against that, because I always said ‘maybe’, and as such it never really happened.

For a long time, I did nothing. Chances and subjects went by, and I liked it, because I waved at them, thinking I could write about them and then letting them go again (that Pirates reference turned into a fishing metaphor really quickly…).

So it isn’t like I didn’t think about it.

No, I think the real turn-around came for me when I started working on my thesis about publishing and the contact between writers and publishers. It didn’t take long for me to realize that, when trying to publish a book, it helps immensely to be known beforehand and have a bit of a publication history, kind of like you’ve been busy selling yourself before and giving people a chance to get to know your work before they actually get to see you. Making yourself famous, so to say.

Anyway, I’m talking around the subject. I had an interview with a very pleasant woman, who wrote about her dieing mother and the last days she was living with her. It turned out to take a little longer than she had expected, and she actually built up quite a little fan base before her mother actually died and the ‘story’ had ended. She confided in me that it had been over a year ago, and that she still hadn’t had the heart to update her blog again and tell the readers that the story had actually ended. By not writing, she allowed her readers to let her live for the time being.

I’m straying, though. What had happened, was that people had found her story and had started reading it. The same happened to my father, who suddenly got read by several people he had never expected to reach him, including the father of a poet he had written about at one point. It was pretty exciting to hear about, and I could only think that ‘that would be cool to have, as well’. That’s how I tend to think, bite me.

So, what’s my reason to write? I guess it’s to try and get out in the world, but I recently realized that my life might not be as boring as I sometimes make it out to be. And I want to see if I can actually get some name branding going, though, if I’m fair, that’s not my main goal.

Getting to write again should be fun, I haven’t been doing a lot of it since NaNoWriMo 2012, so I’ll be glad to actually get to working on it, again. Writing fiction is, probably, one of the most enjoyable things I can do on a daily basis, but I’ve been struggling with both a writer’s block and a complete and total lack of time, so writing for this place in the little nooks and cranny’s of time I can manage to put my hands on should at least ‘ease the itch’, so to say. It’s just not exactly the same as writing fiction, though I might just throw some pitches, ideas and mind farts out there…

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