Do I suck at this?
A Reflection on Writing
I scour the internet for women/femme essayists (preferably WOC) to study, read, indulge in, learn from, connect with, and in-turn, I seek out excerpts from ones that pique my interest.
[If you have suggestions for essaysists to read, please drop a note!]
As I read excerpt after excerpt, I become discouraged — not by the writing but myself. I experience a general unwillingness to read words I’ll clumsily title “sophisticated,” and I get lost in beautifully crafted descriptions of surroundings and experiences.
“Fuck, is my brain this lazy?”
Is this what the internet has done to me — made me unwilling to engage with writing that exceeds the standards of Instagram scrolling?
I consider my own writing and my insistence on expression that is simple, leaning towards redundant and uninspired (oh hey self-deprecation, is that you?), and I question:
Have I lost sight of the “craft” of writing? Am I simply too undisciplined to try harder? Or could this all be elitism propaganda?
I’ve grown insecure about my struggle to describe things in rich and complex ways.
I wonder if my engagement with the world is dull, my assessment of my surroundings perpetually lacking, and if this lacking is a product of not being fully present and aware.
Am I a writer at all?
Or I am merely someone who journals on a computer, slaps an obligatory stock photo on it, and calls it writing?
There are so many precious, delicate, ingenious words granted to us in this English language, and yet I use so few.
I remember reading Hemingway and thinking, “See, this guy gets it. He doesn’t need that flowery language to express himself.” (My opinion of Hemingway has evolved to a much more mixed appreciation, but I diverge.)
And then I’m reminded of all the literary connoisseurs who consider Hemingway an insult to their field… And I end up in the same place I started in.
I’ve tried to be the kind of writer who weaves together eloquent descriptions and multi-syllabic words to craft a narrative with a delicately complex flow.
And instead I come across as a student in Creative Writing 101 who’s just spent two pages awkwardly explaining the experience of taking a shower in a way that’s somehow both boring and excruciating.
Am I attracted to simplicity because of its appeal to mass consumption?
Or is it because it’s all that I can manage?
I avoid the answer, because I’m not so sure that I want it. Or that it matters.
I have a degree in Literature, so I’ve spent countless hours using big words to describe simple things.
Oh, but to do so creatively… what a dream — to take a moment from life and craft is so clearly and crisply that the reader is immersed in it with me.
Is this a skill that is nurtured or an inherent talent one’s blessed with?
It doesn’t take much consideration to realize it’s some combination of the two in varying degrees depending on the individual.
But fuck, my brain just does not assess the world visually. It is emotions I remember, and that’s almost it. My emotions are so powerful that I forget to pay attention to my surroundings: to see the lines on my father’s face, the gap in my step mother’s teeth, the scratches of a table marked by decades of use. How would I describe such things in a way that brings them to life? Should it be so hard?
And then I get tired, tired of trying. So maybe it is laziness. Or something less harsh and judgmental. Maybe it’s simply.. me.
Maybe my stringing together of words resembles something less elegant yet no less.. beautiful?
At least that’s what I’d like to believe — that there’s purity in simplicity. Or pragmatism in laziness. That if my brain works like this, if this “style” of writing resonates with it, then it might work for others as well.
Maybe it’s important to have both in this world — the sophistication and the simplicity.
Or maybe this is all bullshit, and I’m a hack.
Either way, I’m going to keep doing this, whatever it is.
