This thread must seem silly, out-of-place and seen for over a hundereth time, but as I'm not currently working on anything to post a progress journal and as I don't feel this should be a blog post, I'm starting this thread (I hope I'll contribute new). When I registered with the forum two years ago, I was enthusiastic as every newcomer and thought then was the time I was going to nail my writing down to a solid, novellist-to-be base. However, with the milestone of final thesis round my neck, my keenness soon died away; the realization of how difficult it is to write a quality thesis in foreign language discouraged me heaps, as did the final product and on learning that my English sucked in the realm of Epic, I thought myself "cured" from writing disease. After graduation, I was offered a job with considerably huge, international company where English was spoken on daily basis, the correspondence, meetings, mails, newsletter and all that jazz. The work was stressful, a nine- to-five one, so I spontaneously started writing snippets in English to wind off (relax) and later set up a journal (the actual first entry took place at university, I just left off with that). And in free time in work I would nit-pick on grammatical mistakes or inaccuracies in newsletters (uff). I would post a new journal entry almost every day, describing my feelings, observations, opinions and the like. The activity has brought about a certain habit that I can't seem to neglect, the nagging need to get my thoughts recorded in the written form keeps coming back to me all the time, so on the side to writing my journal, I note down my thoughts and story snippets to my mobile phone's notepad on my way to my current job or elsewhere. The above described process has taken about a year, during which time I've been teaching English and reading/writing constantly. What I'm trying to say by all this rant is that I finally have the feeling the actual writing habit has come to existence, rendering my backlogged projects possible to be written, see the face of the earth. I finally have the feeling I have something to say. Subconsciously, I feel I'm able to value the will and the grit to finish a project, help my ideas out of the dark woods of my mind. I sense a new dimension in all that. It's...difficult to put into words. A quote by Murakami that has been nagging at my conciousness lately, one that I came across in one of his interviews: "You have to go down into a dark place when you write and you need physical strength to survive, to come back to the surface."
Why do you have to write in english if it isn't you native language? Still, if you're actually teaching english you must be pretty good at it, so I'd say give it a try. I'm not sure what your actual question was, if there was any. This was just something that came to my mind while reading your post.
Not that I have to write in English - I want to for the sake of getting better. I posed no question actually, now that I read it I should have made it a blogpost instead. The question in the title is a rhetorical one.
The writing habit didn't come into existence, you've carried it with you in every entry you posted to your blog. What so many writer's forget is that it isn't what you're writing, but that you are writing. Many of us have a surfeit of writing projects, non-fiction, fiction, blogs, poetry, or otherwise; the mediums through which they can take shape are just as varied. What many don't do is take the time to jot things down, to get into the habit of devoting even five minutes a day. There will be projects that fit like a glove, that flow in a silken rush, and there are others that you have to fight for every word laid down. But when that project is done, the sense of achievement is unparalleled, a literary high, so to speak. It is a drug, free and alluring , that comes only with the price of creation. Don't hesitate, don't second guess. Take your ideas, and, as you said, bring them out of the darkness. In the dappled light of the written word, lend them the hues of the reader's eye. It is a little like discovering the world is truly multidimensional, a view point changed from that of a causal observer to an explorer, deep in the heart of wold and wood. There is a book I came across some years ago that speaks to the moment. It is a picture book, mind you, but its tale is universal, that moment, that flicker of inner fire that flares and illuminates a path just long enough to tantalize. Follow it and all that lays along its length. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lady-in-the-water-m-night-shyamalan/1103694716?ean=9780316017343
Yes, I definitely agree about carrying the habit everywhere you go. The phenomena I'm experiencing now is that I do realize it's becoming something deeply ingrained and integrated into my thinking. (about the projects) My words - except that I have never truly seen a project coming to its existence, completion. Maybe I'm on the verge of existence, exitting the creative limbo I've lingered in for so long. Your words are words of a person with multiple insight. An absolute sync with what I tried to say. Sometimes this truth dawns on me that words, my words specifically, can really affect the reality I found myself in. As if by creating realities, one takes part on this world already having being created. Thank you for the words of encouragement and reading recommendation.
I had a similar experience with writing a month or so ago. Over the course of a year where I decided that I wanted to be a writer, I tried and tried to get in a habit of doing it every day. I would spend a week writing every day, or maybe two, and then struggle to get back into it for a few days. Then I finished my first story (a fantasy novella of 30,000 words). I'd started other projects before, but always dropped them. As I reached the climax I was writing 1000-2ooo words a day, and it changed me. I now write for enjoyment rather than forcing myself to do so.
