What the Heck Happened??

Writing stopped abruptly, like a summer storm.  The torrent of thoughts and inspiration pouring out of me, dried out without any trace.

What happened?  The silence inside my head is deafening.  There is nothing, but empty hollow space filled with vacuum.

It started with the desire to run away.  To get away from everything, from myself, to forget, to stop thinking. To run away from writing and the agony it's been causing, the sleepless nights, the self-doubt, the criticism, the constant nagging desire to persevere and succeed and publish. No matter what.  I guess that just killed everything else that comes from writing - the self-satisfaction, the quiet dialog with God, the reverence for precious words combined  into tentative poems.

I ran.  I couldn't stay home anymore, with myself, alone with my oppressive thoughts.  I went out.  I traveled.  I tasted wine.  I chatted with my friends.  I just wanted to stop processing, and start absorbing the world around me.  Without judgment, in a quiet meditative state.  Not think.  Just be.

But then, the thinking just stopped completely.  The new semester started again, and for the love of God, I still can't comprehend the resounding yes in me when I was offered to teach another class in Graduate School.  After having agonized about my role as a teacher and having finally decided that I don't want another teaching job, I had no doubts when I agreed to take on another one.

So the struggle to balance the teacher and the writer in me is continuing.  I still can't find myself between the two.  The tug of war between my two personalities is never ending.  Now I am a teacher, dedicating myself wholly to my three classes, giving up a piece of my Soul every single day to each of my students.  I tell myself to stop caring so much, and just do a job, but it's impossible.  I AM a teacher.  My life is a classroom.  I mother and mentor by default.

But I'm also a writer.  Somewhere deep inside me, she is cowering, unable to give herself voice, or yawning, tired and jaded from all the repetitiveness of life.

So I pray to the God of Writing, to please return my voice to me, to fill the dried up well with creativity, and defeat my fear.  I may not be good, and I may not ever publish, but I just want to write.

Writing Is My Soul

My throat is tight, my vision is blurry, and I suddenly forget how to speak English. Well, it is my second language after all.  I am about to read my piece to a group of writers for a critique.  My opinion wavers between it being courageously brilliant and the worst kind of amateurish junk.  The piece is too exposed, sentimental and may be perceived as whiny.  The title alone warns the reader to stay away or armor themselves with the box of tissues: A Hole In My Heart.

As I start reading, gripping the paper in my clammy hands, I can hardly let the words past my lips, but the further I get, the louder my voice becomes.  I become acutely aware of my accented pronunciation, checking off wrong vowels in my mind.  By the end of the reading, it becomes a total out-of -body experience, like the one I had when I uttered the words "I do" in front of the judge, frozen still, but yearning to run away screaming.  All that time I kept thinking what I have gotten myself into, but kept on with the wedding.  So it is here now.  What HAVE I gotten myself into?  But I can't turn back.

I finish the piece strong, but relieved to get it over with.  There is silence.  A kind looking lady becomes teary-eyed at my courage to touch upon such raw emotion.  Another lady, the Christian mystery writer, suggests to add more imagery.  A man, struggling with a chapter in his novel since last year, warns against using too many adjectives.  I gratefully accept all their feedback.  But then things get out of control.

A polished, conceited journalist of Indian descent, in his immaculate pompous Queen's English, armed with a pen and glasses on the tip of his nose, starts meticulously dissecting all my errors, stylistic and grammatical, one by one. He is a newcomer like me, having just joined the writer's group with his beautiful wife, who quietly sits  looking regal and embarrassed at the same time.  The Indian journalist's demeanor is not unlike a strict spinster grammar Nazi, your worst nightmare of a teacher, who gleefully punishes students with the red-penned fat "F"s.  He sees it as his highest mission to reduce me to dust.  I try to defend my choice of grammar; being an English teacher after all, I would presume I know what I'm talking about.

The discussion gets more heated  when he gets to the phrase "paranoid thoughts".  The opinions fly across the table.  Some love this phrase, while others just don't get why I used it.  Perhaps they never have experienced those thoughts, lying awake at three in the morning, lucky chaps.  The meeting starts resembling a fencing duel, with the journalist trying to stab me with his corrections, me parrying with my arguments, and his retreating before attempting the next attack. The duel is gracefully stopped by the referee, the writer's group leader.

In the end, no one is left indifferent about my writing, but I am left confused.  I feel like I've become a sacrificial lamb on the altar of literary critique, or should I say criticism, as the journalist would correct me.

As soon as the meeting is over, I stumble past the colorful shiny book covers, beckoning me to leaf through their crisp pages and better yet purchase them.  I don't know what to do.  Should I follow their temptations, like a kid in a candy store?  Should I go straight home?  Where is my car?  What time is it?  Who am I?  Outside I smoke a cigarette in the hazy humid night.  I should have listened to my mother.  I should have never written anything so personal, let alone shown it to a group of strangers.  I should have stayed home and never ventured out into this dangerous cruel world.

I mull over the situation, unsure whether to laugh or cry.  It undoubtedly looked comical, which I will probably realize later, when my ego is feeling less wounded and stripped.  And crying comes much more naturally to me.  So I do what I do best -- I cry and vow to quit writing forever.

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In the middle of the night, I am consumed by nightmares where writers take votes for every single word I wrote, with the journalist being against me, and the kind ladies cheering me on.  From deep inside me comes a message sharp and clear, like the voice of God calling upon Moses from the Burning Bush.  Writing is not just a hobby for my soul.  Writing IS my soul.  And no one can take that away from me.

A Novel in a MONTH??!!

What have I gotten myself into?!

So I have been on a self-flagellating roll lately and really under the weather about the whole me-as-a-writer thing.  I mean, I submitted an essay and a poem to Christian Science Monitor, and no reply, which means that they are not planning to publish me.  And if I were a Pollyanna, I would just brush it off, and submit something else somewhere else, but I am not. What I am is an Eeyore. And a very pessimistic one too.

Then somewhere I don't even remember where, I saw some information about the site NaNoWriMo http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/ , and I decided to check it out.  This is an organization that encourages their users, who are struggling like me and not-so-struggling writers, to write a novel IN ONE MONTH! They've declared November as a National Novel Writing Month, and in their own words,
 "National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30."

So I decided to register with them and take on the challenge.  I made my profile and novel description: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/641593 . And that's regardless of the fact that I will be working in November, probably teaching Advanced Grammar and Writing class and being buried under the piles of students' essays, housework, and wifely duties.  Hey, what doesn't kill me - makes me stronger, right?

What's the most fascinating is that people actually DO finish their novels in 30 days, and they DO publish them (albeit after numerous editing). With the REAL publishers like RANDOM HOUSE and HARPER COLLINS!  And even though my novel is not a romance, but bravely self-appointed into the genre of literary fiction, I hope it will find its publisher too.

What I need now is a writer's prayer.  And Holy %^&*, I just found one online:
http://www.inspirationforwriters.com/writinglife/prayer.html

AMEN

If My Novel Was A Manga!

I've had a twisted novel plot haunting me for years, and at times I revisit its dark and perverted world.  The plot is pretty simple:

In a totalitarian society controlled by government, where a person's life is worth nothing and basic human rights are nonexistent, an unremarkable government worker gets arrested on false charges of political crime.  His wife is summoned to the secret police service and is given a choice - if she performs "certain duties" willingly with the commandant, who is secretly obsessed with her, he will let her husband go.  She keeps refusing, her husband's interrogation and torture escalates in monstrosity and  cruelty in order to break her spirit and force her into the arms of the devilishly handsome but corrupted and twisted commandant.   In this sick and perverted story, the rules of right and wrong are challenged and discarded with each passing page, leaving the reader increasingly aghast and disgusted, but unable to turn away.

And then, I started reading a shojo manga called "Black Bird", which is as twisted, sick, and sexually perverted as shojo manga can be.  Anything goes - handsome villains, sexually insatiable vampires, killer demons, as long as a teenage girl is involved in the middle of all the blood and gore and sexual tension.  


So I thought, "What if my novel were a shojo manga?"  How free would that be!  Here I am, trying to rationalize the setting, the politics, the characters' reasoning, mentally fighting with the future critics who will try to find fault with any weakness in the plot.  Now, if my novel were a manga, everything would magically fall into place! 


 Wife - a damsel in distress.
Commandant - a handsome, cruel villain.
Husband - a useless, but cute and pitiful good guy.
Setting - a fantasy totalitarian world in an undetermined country and future.
Sexual tension - escalating exponentially.
Blood/torture - elaborate and lurid.

If only I could draw! >_<

The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

Am I a true writer?  Laypeople think that only if you are published, you can be considered a REAL writer.  Others, the more knowledgeable about the agonizing process of writing, say that you MUST WRITE to be a writer.  And still others, the envious and vicious type, a.k.a. my ex-boyfriend, think that you are ONLY a writer if you GET PAID for what you write.

These days, I am doing neither, struggling with trying to find motivation to write every day, and being completely overwhelmed and disgusted by even starting to think about the whole tedious writing process.

Having finished two online writing courses, that something possessed me to take at the same time, I feel wrung out.  All my words have been washed out of me, strung out to flap in the wind on the clothesline, like forgotten laundry.  All my motivation for writing, cleaning, having fun, and simply living is gone with the trickle of sand in an hourglass.  All that is left is silence and the residue of self-criticism.  Empty time, filled with incessant useless ruminations about my own futility.

Am I a writer?

Instead of writing, I read about writing, I subscribed to the Writer magazine, I have found a living, breathing writer's group in Buffalo, I started taking notes on a novel that has been haunting me for years, I have jotted down a few passing thoughts in poetic form, I even squeezed out a few freewriting pages out of my tired and stressed out brain, but I still do not feel like I am WRITING, or that I am a WRITER.

What would it take for me to acknowledge, to truly believe that I AM?

Natalie Goldberg, the guru of creative writing, says that we have to be prepared for some of the worst writing to come out of ourselves in our writing lives.  I think that's what I am producing right now.  And I hope that this drought will pass, and there will be the Great Flood of Inspiration in future.  I will keep criticizing myself and overcoming my self-flagellation every single day, just trudging on, and producing some of the worst writing in the history of the Universe, and then, I may have a single gem of brilliance under all this pile of rubbish and rumble.

"The trick is to keep breathing...."


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When are you going to rise to the challenge?
Always looking at others' success 


So you think you can?


From the grime of the soul's sorrow
A poem blooms

Ramblings and Complaints

Ok, I never took upon me to use this blog to freewrite from my stream of consciousness, and complain bitterly.  But there's a new beginning for everything.  Here it goes:

Why on Earth did I think that I could handle TWO Creative Writing courses in addition to my job, and why on Earth did I think that writing poetry in English would be a breeze?!!!  This is the hardest thing I had to do in my life, except taking a Statistics course and struggling with the concept of Probability.  Even Quantum Mechanics that I read about FOR PLEASURE in my own free time did not seem as hard as Probability.  Now Poetry?

Who in their right mind calls Free Verse FREE?  It has more restrictions than the rhyme and rhythm poetry.  At least keeping the rhythm is completely natural to me, rhyming is much harder, for I have a hard time finding words to rhyme in the language that is not my own.  But in Russian I produced the gems of poetry! When I was 18! What happened since then?  Why now am I struggling so much?  My brain is literally splitting up, and some new areas are at work that have never been used.  I feel the connections between the neurons forming painfully with each new poetic exercise that the instructor throws at us. 

One of the assignments is to write a SONNET!  I am not Shakespeare, I'm just a beginner, as well as some other students taking that class.  As far as I remember from the good old Russian school days, the sonnet form was considered hard even for experienced poets.  So far I have gotten first four lines. With the PERFECT rhyme and rhythm and even making sense,  but continuing with more seems impossible.

On top of that, I have to come up with a prose poem, a poem about an event I heard on the news about and assignments from a new lesson that I haven't even read yet for the fear of stressing myself out.  In addition to that, I am extremely behind my creativity training prose class, where assignments are much more comfortable and easy for me, but no less time consuming.  I have to write about a word of choice and about a writing day in a perfect world, and conduct Internet research on a subject I am not familiar with.  The last one I feel the most comfortable with, because my profession as an ESL teacher have made me an expert in Internet research on almost any subject, including an academic one. Oh Lord, please don't remind me about doing research in grad school in the Cybrary into the wee hours.

As though all these responsibilities I put on myself are not enough, I also set my mind on finishing or restarting for the millionth time the story about Shibshib getting lost for the publication in Chicken Soup for the Soul, which is due MAY 31, which is like in TWO days!  Oh, yeah, look at me, I'm a Superman, I can do it all AND successfully plan lessons. 

And to top all this off, my writing and communicative ability, as well as cognitive skills are almost non-existent now.  It is Friday, I've been struggling with the cold, lack of sleep and adjusting to the work schedule the whole week, and my brain is on strike, or vacation.  So, I declare today a NOWRITE DAY, and I am NOT writing.  As in not writing anything that needs to be written.  I can't deal with requirements and expectations of being judged right now, so I am just rambling on aimlessly in my blog that no one will read anyway.

So, tomorrow, I will go on another Wine Tasting class, and then on a mindless shopping trip at the mall with a friend.  Sunday, I will buy materials for our patio project with my husband, and have a  barbecue dinner at another friend's house.  To Hell with the writing which seems like a nightmare now.  After recharging my brain cells, I will produce yet another masterpiece, as I have always done in the past.

Just have faith and let go.

Discovery: False Starts

I have not realized how many times I tried to write and how many times I gave up.  The following was found in the old journal of sporadic entries from 1999 to 2002, which wasn't the only one started and then abandoned.  I was blown away by the quality of my writing.   I am glad I found courage not to give up anymore.

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It's the first to greet me in the morning.  It's the last to wish me good night's sleep.  It's in a sickly pale face of the moon; it's in the threatening frown of the clouds enclosing the sun.

It's so familiar, it's become a part of my identity, ME.  It's been with me so long, I can hardly remember when I was free of its company.  Maybe that's why I befriended it, because I never had anyone to take it's place.  The imaginary friend of adulthood.

It hits unexpectedly, or should I say expectedly, since it's always there feasting on my self-confidence, preying on my consciousness.

When I used to write poetry, I would call it "My Pain".  When it fits the schedule, I call it "PMS".  Other poeple call it "Being moody".  If I had a shrink, he would call it "Depression".

From the moment I open my eyes to the moment I sink into the bed -- it is always my companion.

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Looking for a job is like looking for a mate:  full of bitter rejections, unfulfilled dreams, and missed opportunities.

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Why does every man, when he is with his male friends, turn into a belching monster, too eagerly laughing at their jokes about his own impotence?

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Cooker's Block

Note: "cooker" is an incorrect but endearing term used by ESL learners that means "cook" or "chef".

So here I am at my Physical Therapy, doing the treadmill.  I love the treadmill, for it lets me concentrate on some creative writing book full of inspiring ideas, and at the same time do some deep torturous self-examination.  As Socrates proclaimed at his trial, which would eventually sentence him to death, "The unexamined life is not worth living", so I am the Great Master of this sport, setting my own trial and being my own plaintiff, defendant, advocate, prosecutor and judge, .

As I try to concentrate on the "Writing as a Sacred Path:" by Jill Jepson, who traveled the world analyzing the spiritual practices of all religions and marrying it with the writing practices, and as I am being enlightened by another pearl of wisdom about nurturing the stories like you would plant a seed, the self-deprecating plaintiff kicks in.  "You are no good.  You ain't no writer.  You can't create nothing.  You are a boring person, a whiner, and a bad wife.  You always make problems for yourself.  Why you can't just let it go and be happy for once!  What was the last time you cooked dinner?  No wonder your husband don't like you."

Who can fight with that?  I, the defendant, just let it go on, ramble itself out, trying to focus on another pearl of wisdom from this wonderful book.  A thought pops into my mind, that time from a wise mature compassionate advocate, the one that keeps observing all from the back of my consciousness.  "You don't just have a writer's block, you have a cooking block.  That's why you can't cook and come up with any idea of what to cook.  You are too tired and winded to create anything."  Yes, thank you for your understanding.  Finally someone not trying to judge me.

As I keep walking on the treadmill and thinking what would I like to do for myself today, what would my heart desire, I see an image of a dusty honorable bottle of shiraz, so dark that it's concealing the treasure inside it.  Yeah, shiraz sounds good.  I tried it for the first time in Tandoori's, Indian restaurant, and it was sublime like a vampire's feast: spicy, deep, earthy, black currant, thick, violet blood.  Since then I've wanted to buy a bottle at Premiere but never found time.  Now is the time. 


Reliving the tangy aroma of the wine, my mind comes up with the perfectly paired dish to accompany it: medium done, with a pink kissable softness inside and smoky seared crust on the outside, grilled sirloin steak, light on the spices to enhance the real taste of meat;  woodsy crimini mushrooms and caramelized onions sauteed in olive oil with savory and caraway seeds; plain salad with iceberg lettuce, slices of radish and cucumber, garnished with parsley, drizzled with lime juice and olive oil, seasoned with a dash of freshly ground black pepper and salt.  Simplicity and sincerity, without embellishments.


So, my plan for the night was determined.  The sage old bearded  judge has spoken.  With the new-found goal and creativity, I create a meal that is perfection in itself, like a brilliantly written poem. Writing and cooking are intermingled, both being the capricious children of inspiration.  You have to dig deep inside the well of yourself to find the perfect recipe from your soul. 

 Needless to say, my husband was pleased. ;)
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And for the true wine connoisseur,

here's the wine I drank with that unforgettable meal:

Letter to Elizabeth Gilbert

Dear Liz, 

May I call you that?  Because that's what you are to me - Liz.  I consider you as close as a friend, or maybe even closer.  You are more than a friend.  You are my mentor, my guide, my guru.  Actually, you are my Jesus.  And your book "Eat Pray Love" is my Bible.

Do I sound too pompous?  I didn't mean that, for what I am sharing is coming from the deepest regions of my heart.  This is the truth I am telling.  You, girl, changed my life.  Your book and your thoughts, like you just plucked them from my mind. You were talking to me in your book, straight to me, like a dear friend at a bar with a drink in her hand, telling it like it is without avoidance and embellishments because the drink made her sincere enough to speak her mind.

And I owe it to you, those sleepless nights on the bathroom floor, trying to contact God, waiting for the sign that He exists, asking for the meaning of life.  Wanting to write, but being scared to start.  Conquering my fear and taking the first step.  Signing up for the online class.  Loving every minute of it.  Finding my voice.  Feeling like I finally fit in, like I found my niche in life. Blogging at 1:19 am about the writing life.  Publishing in the newspaper.  Having something to say, and somebody to read it.  Trying to conquer myself.  Stepping out of the comfort zone.  Listen to the voice in my head, dictating poetic verses to me in the middle of driving.  

You, Liz, are not just a famous writer to me, you are an example of what a thirty-something woman like me can achieve if she puts her mind to it and is not too scared to share with the world her innermost thoughts, even though some people might say they sound too self-absorbed.  I am too very much self-absorbed and melodramatic, but it seems like there is a market out there for people like us, and we will be heard.  

Liz, the Seeker's soul, the childless woman by choice, the Enlightened, I have so much in common with you, and I hope that one day, I will be able to tell it all to you face to face.  We will share a drink at a dim quiet bar, soothed by a mellow Miles Davis' saxophone, or Nina Simone's wistful voice.  Dream big, that's what they say.  So I am dreaming.

With great love and respect,

Lu

XOXO

Waiting to Write

Having not written in a while due to sickness and life's turmoil, I am scared that I will never be able to produce anything worthwhile anymore.  I'm a one hit wonder with one essay published by a local newspaper, big on words and small on action. As I struggle to pull out the words from the deepest regions of my soul, from the hidden caverns of my slow, encased in a thick fog mind, I am disheartened and disappointed at myself.

With so many writing projects in sight, I keep telling myself I will work on them the next day, only to come home to a horrible headache and a stack of essays to correct.  Dinner uncooked, cat litter uncleaned, house in disarray, essays uncorrected, only enough energy left to lie on the couch, unthinking and staring mindlessly at TV while American Next Top Model or American Idol is on, feeling guilty for not being able to juggle my health, house, husband, cat, work, and writing. 

How do they do that, the women who are actually married WITH CHILDREN AND TWO PART TIME JOBS?  Are they blessed with special superhuman powers and can survive without any amount of sleep?  Do they caffeinate themselves to such extent that they actually have energy to keep up with a million tasks a day?  Do they delegate half of their household chores on their husbands who actually have time to obey?  Or do they just feel satisfied enough with keeping their lives half-lived, meals half-prepared, house barely cleaned up after the dog brought all this mess from the backyard, husband on the back burner, children dropped off at multiple after-school activities to delay dealing with them, while the mothers are trying to catch their breath?

I don't know how they do that and why I am incapable of getting a hold of myself and my life, since I have the luxury of working only part time and NOT having children.  But here I am, struggling to survive every minute of every day, toiling through each heavy moment laden with responsibilities, barely relaxing and constantly feeling exhausted from duty, waiting for that free moment of time when I actually feel struck with inspiration and energy to string a perfect sentence together .

Waiting to write.

On Writers and the Nature of Mental Instability

How funny it is that the writers all come from some kind of dysfunctional environment. We all have our demons, we all have the selves we have tried to bury deep, but didn't succeed.  We all are wearing masks, which come down when we write and when we put down on paper our real selves.

Have you ever met a writer who is a happy person?  With white picket fenced 3 bdrm, 2 bath, 2 car garage house, 2.5 children and a dog, perfect husband, a white collar worker, and the writer herself is a happy chipper stay at home mom, feeling completely fulfilled in her perfect Stepford Wife/Martha Stewart role?  Her parents, the middle class, peppy, normal, mentally stable and happily married even until now, organizing the family reunions in their house in Connecticut or Martha's Vineyard?  

No you haven't, and if you did, this writer is hiding behind the happy mask and is on the way to the mental breakdown, or is not a very good writer.  Why would a happy-go-lucky Physical Therapist want to write anything?  She'd rather spend time watching Entertainment Tonight or Dancing With The Stars and feel content eating badly prepared greasy overly sweet Chinese takeout and think she's had her fill of being multicultural for now.

The writers are creatures with the overactive imagination, bordering on mental disease or actually suffering from it.  The writers are conquering their idiosyncrasies one day at a time and are praying that whoever lives with them doesn't up and leave because they are fed up of putting up with all this daily insanity.  The writers are bleeding inside and are writing out their wounds with their own blood on paper as a way to heal themselves, whether their work will be seen or not.  The paper or monitor becomes a channel to God, the pen or keystrokes -- the prayer through our fingers.  The paper doesn't judge, it tolerates anything.  Sometimes it's our only friend who doesn't ostracize or recoil from our blubbering hysteria.

The writers all suffer, but try to grow from their suffering.  And the other normal, shiny, happy people, owe it to us, to learn from our mistakes and lessons without actually having to experience any of those on their own skin.

Fear of Writing -- Fear of Letting Go

The assignment for the creative writing class is to write 200 words on my fear of writing.

Why am I afraid to write?  Why am I paralyzed with the block?  The feeling of hands clamped over my mouth, trying to keep in the nasty words from escaping.  If I let go and find the courage to write what is truly in my mind, in my heart, the dark sinkhole,  the black hole, sucking all the goodness into itself, what will the world see of me?

All the things that I have kept successfully most of the time inside, all the hurt, the pain, the crazy thoughts of different ways to die, from driving full speed into a wall to jumping out of the window, the worry about the world collapsing around me, the ground literally cracking and plunging deep into the magma regions, the murderous images of plunging knives deep into chests, the blood splattering from the bullet, my hands squeezing someone's throat.  All the images flashing in my my mind in the moments of anger, of desperation, of  losing my mind.  The whole world will know what I am inside. 

No hiding behind the mask, the facade of the always well-organized, calm, chipper, professional, even-tone-of -voice teacher. Respectful, looked up to, example for emulating.  The whole world will see the rotten core of me, the flesh eaten by maggots of evil, the heart like the painting of Salvador Dali "The Face of War".

That’s why the fear of writing: If I open my mouth, I’ll open the lid keeping all the boiling craziness inside of me, and then – duck!

A Collection of My Own Profound Thoughts

Procrastinating. Have so much to do, but maybe blogging will lift my mood. 

The following is a collection of the extremely intelligent thoughts that have stricken me in the most inconvenient moments requiring me to stop whatever I was doing at the moment and write them down.  And this was a very long sentence with lots of different clauses and phrases.  Feel free to borrow and quote my wonderful pearls of wisdom after paying ROYALTIES, for all of the following is COPYRIGHT PROTECTED.

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I can't hide the fact that I'm that girl with a pen and a notebook, rushing to write down some smart thought which struck her right in the middle of a conversation. I can't hide the fact that I am that girl who is sitting on a park bench staring at a distance with a faraway look and then frantically scribbling something in her notebook.  

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Writing is like a prayer -- you have to be utterly candid about your innermost darkest thoughts and selfish desires.

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I like thinking.  In fact, I like thinking too much.  And I am narcissistic enough to think that my thoughts are profound enough to be put on paper.

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I feel so much better going through the day with my eyes closed, not opened.

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I didn't make the decision, the decision made me.

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When you open yourself to your heart, it's like falling in love again.

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Don't put your happiness in someone else's hands.

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I'm not positive, I'm just trying not to be negative.

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There's this creepy feeling of being completely out of place, out of sorts.  I don't belong here.  I feel like a cutout stuck on a wrong canvas in a collage.

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It's easy to hide behind a sarcastic, self-deprecating remark, but to put raw unembellished emotions on page -- is a courageous feat.

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And stop carrying anger wrapped around yourself like a cocoon.
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He kissed her into submission.

Regaining What Was Lost

I am cheating a little, for this post was taken from my Writer's Journal and written on January 20, 2010, right after I started taking the online Creative Writing course.

How is it that as a child, I instinctively knew how to tap into my creativity? My journal was a yellowed old notebook with experience, with character. The pen had to be the fountain pen, again suggesting the old writer's spirit, the quill in a way. My dream desk, never acquired, was a heavy mahogany table upholstered with green velvet, solid, able to last through the ages.

I had no inner judge then; I just sat down and wrote what came to my mind, just believing that it was worthy (even though I am sure at times it wasn't). I escaped into my writing, I created characters in a new world, I spent my waking life just thinking of my plot and future events in my stories.

Then it all ended abruptly as I had to change my country, my language, my identity. I have to truly breathe in English in order to be able to write creatively in this language, and I don't feel that I've reached this point yet even after 15 years of living here.

I think in metaphors. I feel in pictures. I live like a character in my own novel, my thoughts constantly running and narrating without ever reaching the paper.

Maybe some day my dream will come true and I will write something. An account of my personal identity crisis. A collection of essays on essence of marriage and coping with the overly imaginative mind. A book of inspirational poems.

Whatever it is, I hope and pray that I can do it, that I have the tenacity and courage.

Who am I to write?

OMG - this was written a long time ago, fall 2009. How far have I come!  I am ACTUALLY pursuing my dream right now AND I'm going to be PUBLISHED in the Buffalo News!

Isn't it lame that the only follower of my blog is myself? Well what do I want? I haven't written anything worth reading, nor do I want anyone to read what I'm writing. It's just ramblings after all.


But write I do want, and it's my dream...


In search of any creative writing workshops/classes in Buffalo I found only online classes. For only $89 I can learn how to be a Travel Writer or how to Write a Life Story. But the point is, I need people to share my writing with, not the computer. Moving on to looking for any kind of creative/journal writing online, I get the same result, "Purchase this program and you will write your therapy journal and observe your progress, as featured on TV...", "For paid members, we offer online workshops...", "Buy hardcover journals for only $19.95...", blah... blah... blah...


I just want to write, not PAY for it. It gets even worse when I try to find a book on creative writing at the library. I think that THEY. JUST. DON'T. EXIST! Now if I wanted to actually PUBLISH something, there's a lot of help in that. Publishing children's books, romance writing, fiction writing, writing AND PUBLISHING about your life for retired and postmenopausal geriatrics, getting an agent, a publisher, and editor, etc. etc. etc.


GAH! I WANT to write, I truly do, but I just don't get any inspiration. Nor do I think that what I have to say actually matters. I'm not as funny, or creative, or interesting as other people. I never got cured of cancer by Jesus, never taught overseas, never adopted an autistic child from Cambodia, never climbed Mt. Everest, never shook Dalai Lama's hand, never was on TV or even radio... I AM BORING! AND I lead a boring life! Describe myself in three words: I own a house, I'm married, I got a cat, oh yes, and I teach ESL. What's that? You're saying that's more than three words? Smart alecs. I know. But the point is that that's all there is. BORING.


I just want to get out of here.