I’ve loved words since I can remember. 7 years old, listening to Chinese songs at my grandparents’ house. I felt so moved by the lyrics and thought: “When I grow up I want to write lyrics.”
A little later, I remember watching news correspondents broadcasting live updates from active war zones and thought: “It must be so exciting to be a journalist.”
I’ve always loved reading as a kid, but when I moved to the US at age 9 and did not speak English beyond “hello”, I needed to catch up, fast. So I went to the library and read books for children(those were the only ones I could understand at first), I read 5-6 books a week, and a year and a half later, my reading and writing level caught up to those of my peers.
Then things got real weird during the teenage years. So many new feelings, all happening at once, it was like trying to catch up with them and desperately wanting to run from them at the same time. It was during this time, that books gave me words I didn’t yet have. Words and sentences describing feelings I felt isolated in. Turns out, none of us are ever alone in our loneliness.
I marveled and hungered for words that helped me understand existing feelings and provoked brand new ones, adding more color, texture, depth, and daydreams to my inner world. In a way, words have always been my lighthouse and lifeboat.
Then in college, I majored in Linguistics and saw language in a new way. More mechanical, mathematical.
The thing that bothers me the most is feeling like I’ll never write words like the ones I read. The incomprehensible world-building skills in fantasy novels, or soul-gripping prose from Anais Nin’s diaries.
There are moments when I’ve written a poem I was proud of, or a piece of essay that seemed to flow through me via some invisible force. Mostly, the words I want to write seem just outside of my grasp. The way a string of words have provoked deep, shattering contacts with hidden parts of me, words that are able to describe, with precision, the exact flavor of a moment - those are much harder to come by.
Right now, I know what I’m writing feels a bit too dry. Other days, too self-indulgent. Some pieces come out like hot lava and others constipation. Unnatural, forced, like sitting on the toilet thinking, should I stay here and see what happens, or get up and try again later?
What I do believe to be true is that writing, like all other skills, are polished and strengthened by practice, by showing up. That whichever ‘garden’ we choose to spend more time in, slowly becomes a more natural way of being.
So, instead of sitting here any longer, I’ll get up now and try again later :)
Hi, my name is Dia. I help people close the gap in the messy middle. By making personal transformation playful rather than painful, approaching new choices with curiosity instead of control. If something here resonates, please say hello!
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Maybe I only think this way because I'm an amateur - and have no stake in my writing being "good" - but I kind of just let the writing do what it wants to do. Whether I'm writing fiction or non-fiction, biographically or otherwise. Making it "good" or "better" comes afterwards, if I even want to do that. I think I take on a kind of wabi-sabi attitude about it. But I agree: getting there, that flow state; sometimes it comes out well, other times it's straining and comes out clunkily. In which case, you gotta' discern "Do I just need to persist until it comes out better or do I just need to revisit it later?" And there's no one size fits all answer, I've found.. You just gotta' follow your intuition, and not lie to yourself, ha!
I'm yapping :') Enjoyed this read! And for what it's worth: I think you're a great writer.