I swear, things get so complicated sometimes

I do believe I think too much. Especially whenever I sit down to write more on the NaNo novel, which up to date is not so hot. I really need to get off my butt, and stop with the procrastinating. And I do. But would you believe it, the small snippets of dialogue and characters just come along whenever I am not by the computer! Argh. I swear, it is driving me nuts, since I cannot very well carrying around a note book when I am walking the dogs, for instance.

This is just like when I was writing on my paper. I can sit at the computer, and stare at the screen for hours, and then when I walk away...poof, lots of ideas. Drives me nuts, it does. Problem is that I really do think too much, and then I end up with writer's block. So, more prompts and writing exercises to just get the writing actually flowing.

I have this great book. Well, I actually have a lot of great books on writing - I just love reading them. But the one I am referring to is called "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldman. I recommend it to all writers out there, she is writing about writing in a not so strict way - more like a creative way, where each chapter is about something new. New advice, new ideas. I love that. For instance, she writes that "learning to write is not a linear process"...amen, sister! Mine is definitely not linear in any way. Not any more.

Alright, just thinking it over actually brought up a whole new world of thoughts concerning my writing. You see, I was the Queen of Writing Long Stories when I was younger. I loved to write. Loved to get more and more ideas to put into the stories I wrote, and I savoured the language lessons in school when we got to write our own things. When I was twelve, I entered the writing competition the school had, where you wrote a story around an image they had picked out. Oh, that worked great for me - I just popped out a story in no time - and even better, I actually won the competition. That was really a glorious moment.

Went through the 7th, 8th and 9th grade - still the same, I wrote long, elaborate stories that my friends loved to read, and perhaps not my teacher - but she at least encouraged me, and said that my language was excellent, and that I had a most vivid imagination. Ohyes, that I did. It didn't matter what the theme was, I wrote it. Back then, I did get stuck on fantasy, though.

And then I started the gymnasium (which is high school in Sweden, 16 - 19). My Swedish teacher did not like me, by any means. And she certainly didn't like my long writing - because that made her read all the more. I wrote a very long fantasy novella my first year, and well, to say the very least, she did not appreciate it. All I heard for three years was that I needed to not be so wordy, to cut down my stories, to be more focused in my writing. Well, to be focused is a good thing, but to have to put up with the less appreciating comments on my work, when others wrote so ...boring things. Well, and worse, actually. I never got a good grade in Swedish in the gymnasium, even though I did very well on all exams, and such. I think it simply was because my teacher didn't like me that she put me down for a medium grade.

Still with me? Then we skip ahead in time, up to the point when I am writing my first thesis in Swedish, which was a comparison between translations of "Anne of Green Gables", and my supervisor...was not very kind, or helpful. Those who knew me back then know how torn apart I was, with having to write chapters of the thesis ...again and again, and then the final straw to really break the camel's back - my supervisor told me that I did not have a very good language. Now, I can just look back and think that...well, I did not have a very good formal language, perhaps, because I had not really tried to write that thesis in formal language. But well, it was another blow to my self esteem as a writer.

Now, it is 3 years later, and I won a scholarship for the best paper in Informatics - written in a foreign language. It's odd, isn't it.

To sum it up....we all have something sitting on our shoulder, whispering in our ear that we are not good enough, and this will and can for sure give us a good-sized writer's block. For me, I have the ghosts of teachers past, ghosts of disapproving family members who whisper in my ear that I am not good enough, that my writing is not good, I should stop it now. And whenever I am now hearing that, I try to think of the other ghosts by my side, the teachers who did encourage the writing, the friends telling me that they want to read more, my parents telling me that I can do anything if I put my mind to it. Yes. I try to listen to them, and less to the negative ghosts. But they are all there, in the back of my mind.