“Preface: Everything I say publicly, no matter how honest, is birthed from an insecure, lonely, approval-seeking, soul. I want for each reader to consider the author of my text to be honest, respectable, and desired…and because I suspect this wretchedness within myself, it has become very difficult to write. So, instead of writing as if this weren’t true, or overcompensating at the expense of others, I’ll try and drabble on about a thing that I do.” –Wilson
“I like to think of my writing as a product of my thoughts and feelings and memories. A tangible artifact of the Nation of Paul.” –Paul
“I just feel that in that moment, I have to just write something to the world.” –Courtney
“Not sure if anyone would ever read them, and probably not ever understand them, why did I keep writing them down?” -azl0003
“here, this is me. Please love me despite how screwed up I am” – Trillium
"Because really, that's what all the scribbling, journaling, and writing is about; it's an attempt to convince myself that I matter, that the minutia of my life are interesting, that my story merits being heard."
“I just let the feelings and anger and frustration and stress build up, and then - I write. I write and write and write until I can't feel it as much anymore.” –Kmp0020
“I feel better after I write, I think it is because I finally let my guard down and just be me for a while.” –Catherine
“I hope that if I ever found someone's notes under the carpet I was tearing up that I would be in love with that moment and with the person who left them.” –Josh
“I never know where I'm going when I begin, and I very rarely end up anywhere. But sometimes it helps to write for me and not for the people I want to like me-- to just throw the words out and let them be.” –Josie
“The river of words is already up in our head, churning into rapids in the rocky bed of our mind. By writing, we allow that river to flow through our arm and onto the paper or the screen. And we do it not because we want to see where the river takes us, but because it just has to flow.” – John
“Isn't that what most writers want to do? To have someone, anyone, that loves your writing enough that it changes their life? I know that's what I want.” – Tiffanee
“Why do we write? I don’t know. But I know that we will continue writing without bothering to look passed the simple, raw words on a page – casting all thoughts of utility and self-absorption aside.” –Whispers
What I’ve learned from this blog is, had I not put names on the ends of the above quotes, I could have read many of them in my journal or found them floating around in my head. We write to forget, we write to validate ourselves, to remember ourselves, to share our selves, to reach out –our hands open- to someone who will grab hold: we write, most of us, because writing is our outlet. We write because it’s who we are, maybe who we were born to be, and to quit writing, at least for me, seems to end something in my very nature/existence.
Writing blindly is like walking in the dark with your hands out, just hoping you’ll touch one other person, and then, you’ll have some assurance that you really aren’t as alone as you thought you were. I think that writing blindly is our way of saying, “I exist. Right here, right now. Find me.” What I feel so fortunate to have learned is, at least in this class, I feel I’ve been found out, and I feel I’ve found, and it wasn’t so hard to give or to get.
I gave a writing quote at the beginning of my blog for this one, so here’s another, and it’s genuinely one of my favorites: “when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.” D.H. Lawrence. It reminds me of what Frank Walters said: Do I want to suggest that we live our lives in a dark submarine interior waiting for the air to run out? Yes. But only if we remain silent.” And, you know…amen. I think that’s what we’re getting at here, with the writing blindly: we’ve got to plunge in sometimes. If we wait for the right words to come, we will die with them: if you’ve got to say it, say it now or hold your breath. I’ve been waiting years to use that line, but I kind of imagined it would be at a wedding. This is starting to make less sense, I’m sure, in the narrative line, so I’ll return.
This made me smile—Josh’s “I've never been very good at creating things. This includes stories. I can verbalize a good story, make a good argument on paper, and even some times be a good listener, but my inspiration rarely comes from my insides. And most often when I try to be creative, i end up feeling foolish about the results. I think i want to be a professional appreciator.” Because if anyone’s going to be a professional appreciator, we all know it’s going to be Josh. Or maybe sweet Kristina and Martha Lee Anne. 1:05.
Dr. PD made me really want to be 12 in 1978 on this one. And it's weird. As I read about what she did, pulling up carpet and leaving notes for people, I was jealous. I wish I would have done that when I left my home.
But since then, my sister and I went with my dad out to our old home. A home that looked as though a tornado had come through when my mom moved us into the town we went to school in.
My dad ordered a big dumpster and borrowed a friend's tractor to load up all of our stuff we had left in the shed. I wanted to help, because it was some of my stuff and I felt bad that I had left it for someone else to clean up.
My sister and I spent half the time cleaning up old shoes, lotions, and other random stuff. The other part of the time was spent walking down Memory Lane. I found this book that asked questions about yourself that you filled in the blanks.
What did I wanna be when I grew up? A ballerina and a pediatrician. Yes, both.
Tape a picture of yourself here, it read. So I did. Glasses, mismatched clothes, a cowlick in my bangs. But a huge smile. However crooked my teeth were. (I wasn't a cute kid. No really.)
The point I'm making? That I wrote down something I never intended for anyone else to see. A whole book of my ten year old hopes and dreams. If nothing else it served as proof to me all of these years later that no matter what evil I try to blame on my childhood...at one moment I was happy.
So I will always write blindly. For myself, mostly. Because who knows? Ten years later I may need reminding of who I was.
It's our first blog back after the scolding from Dr.P to "be nice". Yes, well now Wilson feels like he forgot to wear pants, and I feel like I need to add a legal disclaimer to all my blogs because I don't trust myself. And then we all express how writing is a part of us, like an arm or a leg, something that we breathe from the inside out, a deep feeling in our chest, a vault of emotion, and an unexpected well of feeling finding an outlet in words on paper, in notes, letters, stories, or journals. And some people write how they prefer to read, they want to know and learn about all this from what other people write (and well doesn't that make us preferred writers look narcissistic?). But really we can all relax again, we are all the same. We are blind and dumb and deaf, and it's okay. That's what reading and writing is all about, isn't it? I can't help but think, "Hand me a cane and the dark sunglasses, I am blind and wading through shit, and someone else is going to have to read this."
I don’t think I’ve identified with anyone in this class as much as I did when Josh said, “I want to be someone better at loving what others create. I hope that there's something valuable in loving others’ stories, in being the other half of the story telling equation.” I feel like loving other peoples work is an art unto itself. It is a skill, indeed – to put yourself aside and articulate earnest admiration. Its why critics get paid. Now, I don’t think that creation without critique is worthless – it’s essential in qualifying the other. But as we have found in this class, our work (craft, art, whatever relationship you have to your own writing) is validated in light of its impact on another. I tried to say so aloud on Friday.
Your blind writing has opened my eyes.
Also, R.R.’s [brief] response made sense to me. I write blindly because I don’t do much else to process my insecurity. I don’t have a handle on anything internally or externally, so I write it down. The only thing improved is my perception, and that’s more than enough for me. TeNesha also made a brilliant point that writing blindly is not always out of desperation – sometimes it springs from spontaneity. Maybe in the end that’s why we write – the blindness is just the mystery of it all – that only writing can afford us a map to. John said writing blindly is like following the course of a river – you can neither control or refute its force. The revelation is letting go.
I was going to quote people, but Martha Lee Anne already used everything I was going to quote, so I shall simply let it suffice to say that you pulled the pertinent points out, and I wish I had done it first, because your post is beautiful. Everything everyone wrote that week was beautiful. And like Josh, I wish I could become a professional appreciator. Revisiting the idea of writing blindly, I realized that most of us say we do it because a) we want to be known and b) we need an outlet. And this reminds me of a conversation I had recently with my best friend. We were discussing how entwined we've become in each other's lives, and wondering how the hell we ever did this without the ability to call each other and rant about the pains, annoyances, joys, and oddities of daily life. The only conclusion we could come to was that we both used to do a whole lot more journal writing. Maybe, when I have someone who cares enough to ask about the details of daily life, writing becomes less necessary. But, paradoxically, I'm not sure that this is a good thing. I have the thing I've always said that journaling was a substitute for - but I feel like I've lost part of myself in letting that impulse to scribble thoughts and feelings die off. Is this just my tendency to resist change, or am I on the right track here? Maybe, no matter how much we say writing is just a substitute, it really is the thing in itself that we crave. Maybe the act of writing is, at least for part of the population, our salvation. I don't know, but I do know that I'm going home to pull the journal back out and give myself leave to discuss the trivial with the pages again.
I prefer to write blindly. When I know others are reading something, I inhibit myself, and write what I think they will find appropiate. Especially in classes. So I pretend that I don't know who will be reading it. I pretend that I am sending it out into the world for anyone who happens to stumble across it to see. I don't believe all writing is supposed to be scene by people, most of my writing I would prefer people not to see actually. It's either angry, or sad, or love-stricken and all these emotions I don't generally show. (Except at work, people definitely see me angry at my job.) My writing is the thoughts I couldn't eloquently say, they are the feelings I couldn't quite form.
Writing blindly. I think this was a concept that will stick with me throughout the rest of my college career and into my life wherever it will take me. I have kept a journal for many years of my life. Short sentence and stories that mean only a lot to me. Yet if I were to die and the journals were left vulnerable for anyone to see I wonder who would read them and I wonder if they would touch anyone’s lives. Those people who were about to die wrote letters to loved ones why? Because there is something so meaningful in the written words. It is like leaving a trail of who you are behind and it is anyone’s guess as to who will read it. I liked what these quote because I could relate. “Scraps of paper to no one, shoved tightly under green fibers, probably scrapped without being opened when said carpet was scrapped for hardwood.”(Dr. P)
“The reason I keep a journal now is so that I can watch myself, and read myself, and analyze myself. Get to know myself a little better. I’m thankful that God is the only other set of eyes viewing my journal, or else someone would diagnose me with a list a mental disorders.” (paulschissler). For me, writing blindly keeps me sane. The things I write blindly are the things that I don't want anyone to see at all. When emotion comes on so strong I can't see straight, there has to be an outlet. Thank God I have writing. (Courtney)
I liked what these quotes said because they sum up to me the reason why I keep a journal and why sometimes I write blindly. It becomes not for praise or for receiving compliments that I am a good writer, instead, it becomes a way for me to send out my feelings into a void. A void that may never return my words to me but yet I have gotten them out there.
Sometimes I think that, “I like to write because I'm just not quite good enough at anything else” (R.R. Irwin), but I’ve recently considered the possibility that I’m not good at anything else because I like to write. And that is not a tragedy. Maybe writing goes to deep. Maybe it’s something that makes other things seem thin and transparent. But it may be the opposite. Perhaps we writers write because our failings have driven us to a necessary self-awareness, an intimacy with the workings of things that calls for expression. Like the “Children who learn to write to pass down the stories that are already in them” (John), we write to find the children within ourselves. (I apologize for the “children within ourselves” line, the wordplay was too overt to deny).
“I am free to be blind, to be inexperienced, to just say whatever” (TeNesha).
I can’t write blindly. I really can’t. I’m all too swamped in analysis and consciousness.
(This post was shitty. We won the SEC last night and my adults bought a million drinks for my friends and I and I'm writing while watching the recording of the game and I cant motivate myself to make some food so that my brain will have some energy and I'm sorry the people who's lines were used. You kinda got screwed. )
This was another blog I just wasn't too psyched about. I'm telling you, if I think it's too girly or could be found in the pages of the script from "The Notebook" (count all of the prepositions in that sentence), I tend to avoid it. Honestly, there's just not much to say here. I think it's kind of similar to the subject of the memoir. But I meant what I said, writing just comes naturally to me and in the face of a life-threatening experience, I would probably find myself in a similar position as the people we read about. If I could call my mother and tell her to go on with dinner without me (or tell Aubrey that, yes, I was in love with her that night...gah, is it gonna take me dying to do that? Shit, I hope not...), I would. Then I'd take the little waterproof, yellow notebook and write a little note. Probably just a one-liner like the one I wrote originally; or a joke. If you can't laugh at your own demise, I suppose you lead a sad life.
p.s. To reference that last part about humor in the face of death: Anybody seen the movie "Independence Day"? You know when the fat guy who works with Jeff Goldblum is in his car stuck in traffic and the aliens blow up downtown and the huge fireball comes toward him. He's obviously gonna die, but he doesn't do something emotional or romantic; he's comic relief. He just sits there sweating and says, "Oh....crap." That's how I wanna go, baby.
"Sometimes I wish I had the guts to hand all my diaries over the years to someone and say "here, this is me. Please love me despite how screwed up I am." I love that Trillium has had that idea too.
I am completely and totally afraid of failure. It terrifies me. Compounding that problem is my utter lack of confidence in my ability to do most things well. I get most of my validation from the people around me, and I've spent years pretending that I grew out of that phase of my life.
My writing agrees with that rule. I see little value in the things that I write, so I love appreciating what others make. When people tell me that I'm brilliant, I silently disagree. When someone tells me they like my eyes, or the way I tell stories, I only see the flaws in my selfishness or my vanity. I truly, often, am disdainful of the person that I've become and the person that I was made to be.
I've thought about getting a second degree because I'm not sure that being an English major will be as rewarding as I once thought my career would be. Because I'm not sure that being an English major isn't a way to run away from the love that I'm supposed to be showing to others, a gratification of my ego. Or maybe it's like Wilson says, "Perhaps we writers write because our failings have driven us to a necessary self-awareness, an intimacy with the workings of things that calls for expression." Who knows. I can't see the end.
By the way, I'm cringing as I write this, because I'm watching Saving Private Ryan, and it's almost too hard to watch.
"I am free to be blind, to be inexperienced, to just say whatever." - TeNeesha
"Never do I write what I sit down intending to conceive, and nothing that I sit down specifically to relay gets even halfway to the point." - Whispers
"The things I write blindly are the things that I don't want anyone to see at all." - Courtney
I love this post and these quotes really helped me figure out what it means to write blindly. Bleeding your heart out on paper might be a good way to put it. Refer to Bleed by Hot Chelle Rae. Sometimes when you write with no regard to other's opinions, you express emotions that you never knew existed. Some use this as an outlet. These might be feelings you can't express verbally or don't have the courage to in most cases, but letting your guard down and be brutally honest and REAL, allows you to get the weight off of your shoulders.
I didn't post on this one originally either...haha, my bad.
I am not sure that I ever write blindly. One of my favorite things to do when I am upset, or hurt, or whatever emotion is write a letter to the person who made me feel that way. I say everything that I want to, regardless of whether or not I mean what I say. If I am upset, I probably don't mean it. After the letter is written, I fold it up and put it in a box. Never to be sent.
Most of the time I am happy with this decision. However, I often wonder what would have happened if I had sent the letters to their intended audience. What would have happened if he knew that I loved him? What would have happened if she knew how angry I really was at her? How disappointed I was, really.
Maybe someday when I die and my belongings are rummaged through by my loved ones, these unsent letters will finally be read. Perhaps in my will I should wish them to be sent. That way I'll be dead when they are finally read.
"For me, writing blindly keeps me sane. The things I write blindly are the things that I don't want anyone to see at all. When emotion comes on so strong I can't see straight, there has to be an outlet. Thank God I have writing. If not writing it might be something like cutting or throwing things or something else that is violent. Writing blindly is that sigh of relief, that feeling that I am transferring all the emotion elsewhere. It's the paper's problem now...not mine"-Courtney Paige.
So I realized that I definitely posted this on the original blog post. I've been studying for way too long. Writing blindly has been my safe haven lately.I have had some pretty shitty instances happen in my life here recently but I have had some wonderful things happen, as well. Writing has gotten me through all of it.
None of us really know what it's like to "write blindly." But you know who does?
Helen Keller.
Of course, it's highly unlikely that she would be able to tell us what that's like, because I don't think that anyone in our class knows sign language, but regardless, she's who I dwell on when I think about "writing blindly." (I honestly admire Helen Keller. I'm not really a prick).
If only we had the insight that Helen lacked in outsight (not sure if I worded that the way I thought I intended to), we wouldn't have to worry about writing blindly, because we would know what thoughts were in front of us. But maybe like others have said, that the whole process of writing and not knowing what intrusive thought or passage is going to slip barge its way into our paper is the whole blindness thing. It's exciting and frustrating, but that's life. Like for these blogs, I can't really see through all the fog, but by the time that I reach the harbor I know where I'm going to dock.
I like to listen to music sometimes when I write to just run on sonar, closing my eyes to what I'm writing and just listen to myself instead, and really feel it. I can't be a bat for all the research papers and essay stuff, but I sure feel like the comic book hero DareDevil, relying on instinct and gut feelings, when the lights seem turned off in my blogs.
The more I read these blogs, the shittier I feel for not being able to match names to faces. Just thought I'd mention that.
I still don't consider myself much of a writer. I still don't write because it lets me organize my thoughts. I still don't write because I think I have anything good to say. I pretty much only write for communication or for grades.
I guess I technically write blindly, though. Nobody every gets a revised draft of what I've written, since I still hate my own writing too much to even look at it, even for simple revision. I haven't written a "rough draft" in years. I write, then submit, and just trust that it was good enough to warrant a satisfactory grade.
This even applies to these blogs; I spent most of the semester not reading most of your posts in the hopes that somehow we'd have an unspoken agreement where we wouldn't read each other's work. I'm genuinely sorry about that, for two reasons: 1. I didn't give your work the amount of respect it deserved, 2. my writing has been pretty shitty.
"To have someone, anyone, that loves your writing enough that it changes their life? I know that's what I want." -Tiffanee
This, this, this, this, this. I wrote before that I don't write for "fame" (who reads these days, anyway), but I certainly would if what Tiffanee said did happen. Like what Josh said, "I want to be a professional appreciator." I am sure all of us have experience the feeling after reading a really great something, from Joyce to Little House. Regardless of literary merit in a text, there is this feeling of happiness and satisfaction that can't be garnered any other way. I don't know how to name it; I think it defies being named, even. But it is a wonderful thing.
I hope that one day, we will all be able to write something that will do this. And I also hope that we continue to read texts that do this for us.
There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith – He makes it sound so easy. Writing and blindly are not two words I would usually put together, but in this case it has such strong and powerful meaning. Writing blindly is something that I think the whole class can agree on as being an outlet. It is such a release from the mundane process we refer to as life. This post I honestly feel I cannot say anything that I have not said in my previous blog, but I do feel it is important to my own personal well-being. The whole experience of doing this kind of reminds me of the little saying people have when someone does not know how to swim…”throw them in, if they wanna live they will learn!” Well I cannot swim, I took swimming lessons and I’ve tried many times, but it seems I may never learn. But you know what? I am not scared to try and I can definitely float. So, that has got to count for something. I may not be the best swimmer or writer, but I will make it and I will stay afloat. So, I stick to what I said before, I am free to be blind, to be inexperienced, to just say whatever. That is one thing I will never forget from this class with all of you.
Like Courtney, for me “Writing blindly is that sigh of relief, that feeling that I am transferring all the emotion elsewhere. It's the paper's problem now...not mine.” I wrote in my original post that I just write and write and write until I can’t feel it anymore. I write to release emotion because I cannot handle these raw emotions. Because I can’t get over what he did with her. I can’t believe he didn’t tell me until four months later. Or that my best friend hasn’t talked to me in a year and a half since I told him that I was getting back together with Mike. And I can’t get over that my dad can go everyday without seeing his family.
“I think more than death, and roaches, and the dark, people are afraid of being forgotten” (Martha Lee Anne). I’ve always known that I have Athazagoraphobia, the fear of being forgotten. But I realize now that I want people to read what I have to say and to be moved by it, somehow. I want people to see me through in a way that they never saw me before. I ache for my words to create me, instead of them to be created by me. Does this make sense?
PS. "I like to write because I'm just not quite good enough at anything else, which I usually write about" (R. R. Irwin). That's a bunch of bullshit. I wanted to call you out earlier, but I was too nervous to say it at the beginning of the semester.
I still say the the same thing as in my old post...I don't think that I write blindly. Aside from poetry writing and essays, this blogging is the most writing I've done in about a year. Like others have mentioned, they write blindly in like journals, thinking that no one will ever read, but I write because I want others to read. Idk...I guess it's just the difference between all of us. When I write, I try to be free as possible, but in this class I definitely learned to be freer with my writing.
It isn't just the writing we do blindly. It's the living. We have to take the mataphor for all its possibilities. We're pretty sure we go through life with our eyes open and that we can reflect back on it with the penetrating insight of hindsight. Writing is, after all, in some views, putting into words what's already in our heads, as memory, a concept. But like life, it's also a step further to the right on the page, down a line, over to the next page, everything ahead of us blank and as empty but always possible. When we write about it, then, we're not just remembering in words, but (re)creating, or as I like to put it in my own blog, creating, crafting, making. -Dr. Walters
Writing blindly, creating truth in each phrase we make. Making truth that in turn makes us. This blog was hard. I write blindly only in the sense that I just sit down and write and if what comes out is coherent, I turn it in. As for writing blindly, writing without an agenda, writing the me onto paper, I am too chicken for that. Too much of a people pleaser. I am scared to keep writing for fear that I won’t like the person who comes out.
That’s what makes these blogs so difficult. Writing to people whose faces I can’t see and whose reactions I can’t psycho-analyze. I can’t hide behind characters or fun descriptions of characters in these blogs. I am awkwardly standing before this class and being me. Or atleast trying. This blog never was posted. It’s somewhere on my computer. But I chickened out. The truth that came into existence, that came from the deep, inner me was not who I wanted it to be. The process of putting words down, of filling that blank page of possibility with text, the process is such a reflection of life, and this blog (and the class) taught me this.
One of my favorite blogs. And I want to thank Martha for putting all those quotes above. She really nailed it, especially when she noted that those quotes could be in her journal. Not to sound too hippyish, but we are all kindred spirits, we are all writers. At some point, we all write blindly because that's what we do. Alcoholics drink, gamblers gamble, boxers box, and we write.
What is different for each person is the importance placed on writing blindly. Some don't like it because it can lead to some unsavory places, and what else is more terrifying then following a pitted path to a nightmare of your own design? Other's want it because they like to kick a rusty can down said path, and delight in the lightning and smog and fire and tears that collide in a trainwreck of the psyche. I tend to like that trip, because I feel that if I know where I am going, then the trip is just so bland. Nothing reaches out and grabs me by the collar and says "Hey! This is real!" No, I only pay the toll, and sit in bumper-tobumper traffic. But when I am lost, I get to take the open exit, and speed on the dusty county roads of my mind. I may skid and slide and eventually wreck, but I would rather be a part of the twisted metal fragments than stuck in a white sedan sliding by, spectating.
How do I explain this...? Josh spoke my mind...I was always more of a reader than a writer. At least an out loud sort of writer. I keep journals obsessively...I like to remember everything, exactly how I felt in that moment on a certain exact date. But letting the world see that scares me. After a certain point I backed down. I don't know if there is such a think as NOT writing blindly. Once we put our creation out there, yeah, we have to take ownership for it...but we also have to realize that it takes on a life of it's own. It may effect people in a way we didn't know. For awhile my silence has said more than my words. If I admit everything, and like Trillium talks about, let the world read my journals, my deep dark secrets, really, what do I accomplish? Honestly though, if I get really down and gritty and tell you about the trips to the doctor, and the moments where I've felt alone, or loved, awkward hookups, the nights laying on the floor drunk with my roommates, just talking about life and laughing, the ups and downs of the whole semester...will you respect me more? It's why I so often write for just myself. When do I know I've created something beautiful and worthwhile? But I think that is what I have learned...being blind is part of it and that's okay. The struggle is the whole point. It's the reason you put it out there instead of holding it close.
I love what Christine just said..."The truth that came into existence, that came from the deep, inner me was not who I wanted it to be. The process of putting words down, of filling that blank page of possibility with text, the process is such a reflection of life, and this blog (and the class) taught me this. "
“Preface: Everything I say publicly, no matter how honest, is birthed from an insecure, lonely, approval-seeking, soul. I want for each reader to consider the author of my text to be honest, respectable, and desired…and because I suspect this wretchedness within myself, it has become very difficult to write. So, instead of writing as if this weren’t true, or overcompensating at the expense of others, I’ll try and drabble on about a thing that I do.” –Wilson
ReplyDelete“I like to think of my writing as a product of my thoughts and feelings and memories. A tangible artifact of the Nation of Paul.” –Paul
“I just feel that in that moment, I have to just write something to the world.” –Courtney
“Not sure if anyone would ever read them, and probably not ever understand them, why did I keep writing them down?” -azl0003
“here, this is me. Please love me despite how screwed up I am” – Trillium
"Because really, that's what all the scribbling, journaling, and writing is about; it's an attempt to convince myself that I matter, that the minutia of my life are interesting, that my story merits being heard."
“I just let the feelings and anger and frustration and stress build up, and then - I write. I write and write and write until I can't feel it as much anymore.” –Kmp0020
“I feel better after I write, I think it is because I finally let my guard down and just be me for a while.” –Catherine
“I hope that if I ever found someone's notes under the carpet I was tearing up that I would be in love with that moment and with the person who left them.” –Josh
“I never know where I'm going when I begin, and I very rarely end up anywhere. But sometimes it helps to write for me and not for the people I want to like me-- to just throw the words out and let them be.” –Josie
“The river of words is already up in our head, churning into rapids in the rocky bed of our mind. By writing, we allow that river to flow through our arm and onto the paper or the screen. And we do it not because we want to see where the river takes us, but because it just has to flow.” – John
“Isn't that what most writers want to do? To have someone, anyone, that loves your writing enough that it changes their life? I know that's what I want.” – Tiffanee
“Why do we write? I don’t know. But I know that we will continue writing without bothering to look passed the simple, raw words on a page – casting all thoughts of utility and self-absorption aside.” –Whispers
What I’ve learned from this blog is, had I not put names on the ends of the above quotes, I could have read many of them in my journal or found them floating around in my head. We write to forget, we write to validate ourselves, to remember ourselves, to share our selves, to reach out –our hands open- to someone who will grab hold: we write, most of us, because writing is our outlet. We write because it’s who we are, maybe who we were born to be, and to quit writing, at least for me, seems to end something in my very nature/existence.
Writing blindly is like walking in the dark with your hands out, just hoping you’ll touch one other person, and then, you’ll have some assurance that you really aren’t as alone as you thought you were. I think that writing blindly is our way of saying, “I exist. Right here, right now. Find me.” What I feel so fortunate to have learned is, at least in this class, I feel I’ve been found out, and I feel I’ve found, and it wasn’t so hard to give or to get.
I gave a writing quote at the beginning of my blog for this one, so here’s another, and it’s genuinely one of my favorites: “when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.” D.H. Lawrence. It reminds me of what Frank Walters said: Do I want to suggest that we live our lives in a dark submarine interior waiting for the air to run out? Yes. But only if we remain silent.” And, you know…amen. I think that’s what we’re getting at here, with the writing blindly: we’ve got to plunge in sometimes. If we wait for the right words to come, we will die with them: if you’ve got to say it, say it now or hold your breath. I’ve been waiting years to use that line, but I kind of imagined it would be at a wedding. This is starting to make less sense, I’m sure, in the narrative line, so I’ll return.
ReplyDeleteThis made me smile—Josh’s “I've never been very good at creating things. This includes stories. I can verbalize a good story, make a good argument on paper, and even some times be a good listener, but my inspiration rarely comes from my insides. And most often when I try to be creative, i end up feeling foolish about the results. I think i want to be a professional appreciator.” Because if anyone’s going to be a professional appreciator, we all know it’s going to be Josh. Or maybe sweet Kristina and Martha Lee Anne. 1:05.
Dr. PD made me really want to be 12 in 1978 on this one. And it's weird. As I read about what she did, pulling up carpet and leaving notes for people, I was jealous. I wish I would have done that when I left my home.
ReplyDeleteBut since then, my sister and I went with my dad out to our old home. A home that looked as though a tornado had come through when my mom moved us into the town we went to school in.
My dad ordered a big dumpster and borrowed a friend's tractor to load up all of our stuff we had left in the shed. I wanted to help, because it was some of my stuff and I felt bad that I had left it for someone else to clean up.
My sister and I spent half the time cleaning up old shoes, lotions, and other random stuff. The other part of the time was spent walking down Memory Lane. I found this book that asked questions about yourself that you filled in the blanks.
What did I wanna be when I grew up? A ballerina and a pediatrician. Yes, both.
Tape a picture of yourself here, it read. So I did. Glasses, mismatched clothes, a cowlick in my bangs. But a huge smile. However crooked my teeth were. (I wasn't a cute kid. No really.)
The point I'm making? That I wrote down something I never intended for anyone else to see. A whole book of my ten year old hopes and dreams. If nothing else it served as proof to me all of these years later that no matter what evil I try to blame on my childhood...at one moment I was happy.
So I will always write blindly. For myself, mostly. Because who knows? Ten years later I may need reminding of who I was.
It's our first blog back after the scolding from Dr.P to "be nice". Yes, well now Wilson feels like he forgot to wear pants, and I feel like I need to add a legal disclaimer to all my blogs because I don't trust myself. And then we all express how writing is a part of us, like an arm or a leg, something that we breathe from the inside out, a deep feeling in our chest, a vault of emotion, and an unexpected well of feeling finding an outlet in words on paper, in notes, letters, stories, or journals. And some people write how they prefer to read, they want to know and learn about all this from what other people write (and well doesn't that make us preferred writers look narcissistic?). But really we can all relax again, we are all the same. We are blind and dumb and deaf, and it's okay. That's what reading and writing is all about, isn't it? I can't help but think, "Hand me a cane and the dark sunglasses, I am blind and wading through shit, and someone else is going to have to read this."
ReplyDeleteI don’t think I’ve identified with anyone in this class as much as I did when Josh said, “I want to be someone better at loving what others create. I hope that there's something valuable in loving others’ stories, in being the other half of the story telling equation.” I feel like loving other peoples work is an art unto itself. It is a skill, indeed – to put yourself aside and articulate earnest admiration. Its why critics get paid. Now, I don’t think that creation without critique is worthless – it’s essential in qualifying the other. But as we have found in this class, our work (craft, art, whatever relationship you have to your own writing) is validated in light of its impact on another. I tried to say so aloud on Friday.
ReplyDeleteYour blind writing has opened my eyes.
Also, R.R.’s [brief] response made sense to me. I write blindly because I don’t do much else to process my insecurity. I don’t have a handle on anything internally or externally, so I write it down. The only thing improved is my perception, and that’s more than enough for me. TeNesha also made a brilliant point that writing blindly is not always out of desperation – sometimes it springs from spontaneity. Maybe in the end that’s why we write – the blindness is just the mystery of it all – that only writing can afford us a map to. John said writing blindly is like following the course of a river – you can neither control or refute its force. The revelation is letting go.
I was going to quote people, but Martha Lee Anne already used everything I was going to quote, so I shall simply let it suffice to say that you pulled the pertinent points out, and I wish I had done it first, because your post is beautiful. Everything everyone wrote that week was beautiful. And like Josh, I wish I could become a professional appreciator.
ReplyDeleteRevisiting the idea of writing blindly, I realized that most of us say we do it because a) we want to be known and b) we need an outlet. And this reminds me of a conversation I had recently with my best friend. We were discussing how entwined we've become in each other's lives, and wondering how the hell we ever did this without the ability to call each other and rant about the pains, annoyances, joys, and oddities of daily life. The only conclusion we could come to was that we both used to do a whole lot more journal writing. Maybe, when I have someone who cares enough to ask about the details of daily life, writing becomes less necessary. But, paradoxically, I'm not sure that this is a good thing. I have the thing I've always said that journaling was a substitute for - but I feel like I've lost part of myself in letting that impulse to scribble thoughts and feelings die off. Is this just my tendency to resist change, or am I on the right track here? Maybe, no matter how much we say writing is just a substitute, it really is the thing in itself that we crave. Maybe the act of writing is, at least for part of the population, our salvation. I don't know, but I do know that I'm going home to pull the journal back out and give myself leave to discuss the trivial with the pages again.
I prefer to write blindly. When I know others are reading something, I inhibit myself, and write what I think they will find appropiate. Especially in classes. So I pretend that I don't know who will be reading it. I pretend that I am sending it out into the world for anyone who happens to stumble across it to see. I don't believe all writing is supposed to be scene by people, most of my writing I would prefer people not to see actually. It's either angry, or sad, or love-stricken and all these emotions I don't generally show. (Except at work, people definitely see me angry at my job.) My writing is the thoughts I couldn't eloquently say, they are the feelings I couldn't quite form.
ReplyDeleteWriting blindly. I think this was a concept that will stick with me throughout the rest of my college career and into my life wherever it will take me. I have kept a journal for many years of my life. Short sentence and stories that mean only a lot to me. Yet if I were to die and the journals were left vulnerable for anyone to see I wonder who would read them and I wonder if they would touch anyone’s lives. Those people who were about to die wrote letters to loved ones why? Because there is something so meaningful in the written words. It is like leaving a trail of who you are behind and it is anyone’s guess as to who will read it.
ReplyDeleteI liked what these quote because I could relate. “Scraps of paper to no one, shoved tightly under green fibers, probably scrapped without being opened when said carpet was scrapped for hardwood.”(Dr. P)
“The reason I keep a journal now is so that I can watch myself, and read myself, and analyze myself. Get to know myself a little better. I’m thankful that God is the only other set of eyes viewing my journal, or else someone would diagnose me with a list a mental disorders.” (paulschissler).
For me, writing blindly keeps me sane. The things I write blindly are the things that I don't want anyone to see at all. When emotion comes on so strong I can't see straight, there has to be an outlet. Thank God I have writing. (Courtney)
I liked what these quotes said because they sum up to me the reason why I keep a journal and why sometimes I write blindly. It becomes not for praise or for receiving compliments that I am a good writer, instead, it becomes a way for me to send out my feelings into a void. A void that may never return my words to me but yet I have gotten them out there.
Sometimes I think that, “I like to write because I'm just not quite good enough at anything else” (R.R. Irwin), but I’ve recently considered the possibility that I’m not good at anything else because I like to write. And that is not a tragedy. Maybe writing goes to deep. Maybe it’s something that makes other things seem thin and transparent. But it may be the opposite. Perhaps we writers write because our failings have driven us to a necessary self-awareness, an intimacy with the workings of things that calls for expression. Like the “Children who learn to write to pass down the stories that are already in them” (John), we write to find the children within ourselves. (I apologize for the “children within ourselves” line, the wordplay was too overt to deny).
ReplyDelete“I am free to be blind, to be inexperienced, to just say whatever” (TeNesha).
I can’t write blindly. I really can’t. I’m all too swamped in analysis and consciousness.
(This post was shitty. We won the SEC last night and my adults bought a million drinks for my friends and I and I'm writing while watching the recording of the game and I cant motivate myself to make some food so that my brain will have some energy and I'm sorry the people who's lines were used. You kinda got screwed. )
This was another blog I just wasn't too psyched about. I'm telling you, if I think it's too girly or could be found in the pages of the script from "The Notebook" (count all of the prepositions in that sentence), I tend to avoid it. Honestly, there's just not much to say here. I think it's kind of similar to the subject of the memoir. But I meant what I said, writing just comes naturally to me and in the face of a life-threatening experience, I would probably find myself in a similar position as the people we read about. If I could call my mother and tell her to go on with dinner without me (or tell Aubrey that, yes, I was in love with her that night...gah, is it gonna take me dying to do that? Shit, I hope not...), I would. Then I'd take the little waterproof, yellow notebook and write a little note. Probably just a one-liner like the one I wrote originally; or a joke. If you can't laugh at your own demise, I suppose you lead a sad life.
ReplyDeletep.s. To reference that last part about humor in the face of death: Anybody seen the movie "Independence Day"? You know when the fat guy who works with Jeff Goldblum is in his car stuck in traffic and the aliens blow up downtown and the huge fireball comes toward him. He's obviously gonna die, but he doesn't do something emotional or romantic; he's comic relief. He just sits there sweating and says, "Oh....crap." That's how I wanna go, baby.
ReplyDelete"Sometimes I wish I had the guts to hand all my diaries over the years to someone and say "here, this is me. Please love me despite how screwed up I am." I love that Trillium has had that idea too.
ReplyDeleteI am completely and totally afraid of failure. It terrifies me. Compounding that problem is my utter lack of confidence in my ability to do most things well. I get most of my validation from the people around me, and I've spent years pretending that I grew out of that phase of my life.
My writing agrees with that rule. I see little value in the things that I write, so I love appreciating what others make. When people tell me that I'm brilliant, I silently disagree. When someone tells me they like my eyes, or the way I tell stories, I only see the flaws in my selfishness or my vanity. I truly, often, am disdainful of the person that I've become and the person that I was made to be.
I've thought about getting a second degree because I'm not sure that being an English major will be as rewarding as I once thought my career would be. Because I'm not sure that being an English major isn't a way to run away from the love that I'm supposed to be showing to others, a gratification of my ego. Or maybe it's like Wilson says, "Perhaps we writers write because our failings have driven us to a necessary self-awareness, an intimacy with the workings of things that calls for expression." Who knows. I can't see the end.
By the way, I'm cringing as I write this, because I'm watching Saving Private Ryan, and it's almost too hard to watch.
"I am free to be blind, to be inexperienced, to just say whatever." - TeNeesha
ReplyDelete"Never do I write what I sit down intending to conceive, and nothing that I sit down specifically to relay gets even halfway to the point." - Whispers
"The things I write blindly are the things that I don't want anyone to see at all." - Courtney
I love this post and these quotes really helped me figure out what it means to write blindly. Bleeding your heart out on paper might be a good way to put it. Refer to Bleed by Hot Chelle Rae. Sometimes when you write with no regard to other's opinions, you express emotions that you never knew existed. Some use this as an outlet. These might be feelings you can't express verbally or don't have the courage to in most cases, but letting your guard down and be brutally honest and REAL, allows you to get the weight off of your shoulders.
I didn't post on this one originally either...haha, my bad.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that I ever write blindly. One of my favorite things to do when I am upset, or hurt, or whatever emotion is write a letter to the person who made me feel that way. I say everything that I want to, regardless of whether or not I mean what I say. If I am upset, I probably don't mean it. After the letter is written, I fold it up and put it in a box. Never to be sent.
Most of the time I am happy with this decision. However, I often wonder what would have happened if I had sent the letters to their intended audience. What would have happened if he knew that I loved him? What would have happened if she knew how angry I really was at her? How disappointed I was, really.
Maybe someday when I die and my belongings are rummaged through by my loved ones, these unsent letters will finally be read. Perhaps in my will I should wish them to be sent. That way I'll be dead when they are finally read.
"For me, writing blindly keeps me sane. The things I write blindly are the things that I don't want anyone to see at all. When emotion comes on so strong I can't see straight, there has to be an outlet. Thank God I have writing. If not writing it might be something like cutting or throwing things or something else that is violent. Writing blindly is that sigh of relief, that feeling that I am transferring all the emotion elsewhere. It's the paper's problem now...not mine"-Courtney Paige.
ReplyDeleteSo I realized that I definitely posted this on the original blog post. I've been studying for way too long. Writing blindly has been my safe haven lately.I have had some pretty shitty instances happen in my life here recently but I have had some wonderful things happen, as well. Writing has gotten me through all of it.
None of us really know what it's like to "write blindly." But you know who does?
ReplyDeleteHelen Keller.
Of course, it's highly unlikely that she would be able to tell us what that's like, because I don't think that anyone in our class knows sign language, but regardless, she's who I dwell on when I think about "writing blindly." (I honestly admire Helen Keller. I'm not really a prick).
If only we had the insight that Helen lacked in outsight (not sure if I worded that the way I thought I intended to), we wouldn't have to worry about writing blindly, because we would know what thoughts were in front of us. But maybe like others have said, that the whole process of writing and not knowing what intrusive thought or passage is going to slip barge its way into our paper is the whole blindness thing. It's exciting and frustrating, but that's life. Like for these blogs, I can't really see through all the fog, but by the time that I reach the harbor I know where I'm going to dock.
I like to listen to music sometimes when I write to just run on sonar, closing my eyes to what I'm writing and just listen to myself instead, and really feel it. I can't be a bat for all the research papers and essay stuff, but I sure feel like the comic book hero DareDevil, relying on instinct and gut feelings, when the lights seem turned off in my blogs.
It's ok, Paul. I lol'd at the Helen Keller joke.
ReplyDeleteThe more I read these blogs, the shittier I feel for not being able to match names to faces. Just thought I'd mention that.
I still don't consider myself much of a writer. I still don't write because it lets me organize my thoughts.
I still don't write because I think I have anything good to say.
I pretty much only write for communication or for grades.
I guess I technically write blindly, though. Nobody every gets a revised draft of what I've written, since I still hate my own writing too much to even look at it, even for simple revision. I haven't written a "rough draft" in years. I write, then submit, and just trust that it was good enough to warrant a satisfactory grade.
This even applies to these blogs; I spent most of the semester not reading most of your posts in the hopes that somehow we'd have an unspoken agreement where we wouldn't read each other's work. I'm genuinely sorry about that, for two reasons: 1. I didn't give your work the amount of respect it deserved, 2. my writing has been pretty shitty.
"To have someone, anyone, that loves your writing enough that it changes their life? I know that's what I want." -Tiffanee
ReplyDeleteThis, this, this, this, this. I wrote before that I don't write for "fame" (who reads these days, anyway), but I certainly would if what Tiffanee said did happen. Like what Josh said, "I want to be a professional appreciator." I am sure all of us have experience the feeling after reading a really great something, from Joyce to Little House. Regardless of literary merit in a text, there is this feeling of happiness and satisfaction that can't be garnered any other way. I don't know how to name it; I think it defies being named, even. But it is a wonderful thing.
I hope that one day, we will all be able to write something that will do this. And I also hope that we continue to read texts that do this for us.
There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith – He makes it sound so easy.
ReplyDeleteWriting and blindly are not two words I would usually put together, but in this case it has such strong and powerful meaning. Writing blindly is something that I think the whole class can agree on as being an outlet. It is such a release from the mundane process we refer to as life. This post I honestly feel I cannot say anything that I have not said in my previous blog, but I do feel it is important to my own personal well-being. The whole experience of doing this kind of reminds me of the little saying people have when someone does not know how to swim…”throw them in, if they wanna live they will learn!” Well I cannot swim, I took swimming lessons and I’ve tried many times, but it seems I may never learn. But you know what? I am not scared to try and I can definitely float. So, that has got to count for something. I may not be the best swimmer or writer, but I will make it and I will stay afloat. So, I stick to what I said before, I am free to be blind, to be inexperienced, to just say whatever. That is one thing I will never forget from this class with all of you.
Like Courtney, for me “Writing blindly is that sigh of relief, that feeling that I am transferring all the emotion elsewhere. It's the paper's problem now...not mine.” I wrote in my original post that I just write and write and write until I can’t feel it anymore. I write to release emotion because I cannot handle these raw emotions. Because I can’t get over what he did with her. I can’t believe he didn’t tell me until four months later. Or that my best friend hasn’t talked to me in a year and a half since I told him that I was getting back together with Mike. And I can’t get over that my dad can go everyday without seeing his family.
ReplyDelete“I think more than death, and roaches, and the dark, people are afraid of being forgotten” (Martha Lee Anne). I’ve always known that I have Athazagoraphobia, the fear of being forgotten. But I realize now that I want people to read what I have to say and to be moved by it, somehow. I want people to see me through in a way that they never saw me before. I ache for my words to create me, instead of them to be created by me. Does this make sense?
PS. "I like to write because I'm just not quite good enough at anything else, which I usually write about" (R. R. Irwin). That's a bunch of bullshit. I wanted to call you out earlier, but I was too nervous to say it at the beginning of the semester.
ReplyDeleteI still say the the same thing as in my old post...I don't think that I write blindly. Aside from poetry writing and essays, this blogging is the most writing I've done in about a year. Like others have mentioned, they write blindly in like journals, thinking that no one will ever read, but I write because I want others to read. Idk...I guess it's just the difference between all of us. When I write, I try to be free as possible, but in this class I definitely learned to be freer with my writing.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't just the writing we do blindly. It's the living. We have to take the mataphor for all its possibilities. We're pretty sure we go through life with our eyes open and that we can reflect back on it with the penetrating insight of hindsight. Writing is, after all, in some views, putting into words what's already in our heads, as memory, a concept. But like life, it's also a step further to the right on the page, down a line, over to the next page, everything ahead of us blank and as empty but always possible. When we write about it, then, we're not just remembering in words, but (re)creating, or as I like to put it in my own blog, creating, crafting, making. -Dr. Walters
ReplyDeleteWriting blindly, creating truth in each phrase we make. Making truth that in turn makes us. This blog was hard. I write blindly only in the sense that I just sit down and write and if what comes out is coherent, I turn it in. As for writing blindly, writing without an agenda, writing the me onto paper, I am too chicken for that. Too much of a people pleaser. I am scared to keep writing for fear that I won’t like the person who comes out.
That’s what makes these blogs so difficult. Writing to people whose faces I can’t see and whose reactions I can’t psycho-analyze. I can’t hide behind characters or fun descriptions of characters in these blogs. I am awkwardly standing before this class and being me. Or atleast trying. This blog never was posted. It’s somewhere on my computer. But I chickened out. The truth that came into existence, that came from the deep, inner me was not who I wanted it to be. The process of putting words down, of filling that blank page of possibility with text, the process is such a reflection of life, and this blog (and the class) taught me this.
One of my favorite blogs. And I want to thank Martha for putting all those quotes above. She really nailed it, especially when she noted that those quotes could be in her journal. Not to sound too hippyish, but we are all kindred spirits, we are all writers. At some point, we all write blindly because that's what we do. Alcoholics drink, gamblers gamble, boxers box, and we write.
ReplyDeleteWhat is different for each person is the importance placed on writing blindly. Some don't like it because it can lead to some unsavory places, and what else is more terrifying then following a pitted path to a nightmare of your own design? Other's want it because they like to kick a rusty can down said path, and delight in the lightning and smog and fire and tears that collide in a trainwreck of the psyche. I tend to like that trip, because I feel that if I know where I am going, then the trip is just so bland. Nothing reaches out and grabs me by the collar and says "Hey! This is real!" No, I only pay the toll, and sit in bumper-tobumper traffic. But when I am lost, I get to take the open exit, and speed on the dusty county roads of my mind. I may skid and slide and eventually wreck, but I would rather be a part of the twisted metal fragments than stuck in a white sedan sliding by, spectating.
How do I explain this...?
ReplyDeleteJosh spoke my mind...I was always more of a reader than a writer. At least an out loud sort of writer. I keep journals obsessively...I like to remember everything, exactly how I felt in that moment on a certain exact date. But letting the world see that scares me. After a certain point I backed down.
I don't know if there is such a think as NOT writing blindly. Once we put our creation out there, yeah, we have to take ownership for it...but we also have to realize that it takes on a life of it's own. It may effect people in a way we didn't know.
For awhile my silence has said more than my words. If I admit everything, and like Trillium talks about, let the world read my journals, my deep dark secrets, really, what do I accomplish? Honestly though, if I get really down and gritty and tell you about the trips to the doctor, and the moments where I've felt alone, or loved, awkward hookups, the nights laying on the floor drunk with my roommates, just talking about life and laughing, the ups and downs of the whole semester...will you respect me more? It's why I so often write for just myself.
When do I know I've created something beautiful and worthwhile? But I think that is what I have learned...being blind is part of it and that's okay. The struggle is the whole point. It's the reason you put it out there instead of holding it close.
I love what Christine just said..."The truth that came into existence, that came from the deep, inner me was not who I wanted it to be. The process of putting words down, of filling that blank page of possibility with text, the process is such a reflection of life, and this blog (and the class) taught me this. "