Things in my head

[andrewducker]

Do not panic!

Sometimes I feel words turn inside me, slipping fish-like out of my grasp, back to the deep waters.

Sometimes I feel nothing, words gone blank and dead, burned out from nothing more than a slight change in chemical balance.

I reach for things I know and find that the crystal clarity of conception has fled,

It's a knife edge, too tired, not tired, too hungry, not hungry, happy, not happy. Any of these can be right and any of them can be wrong and all of them are irrelevant when it's there, inside my head, pushing it's way down my spine and out through my fingertips.

I used to hate writing - English was my bane. At the age of 16 I attained a lowly D grade and even that was more than I expected. As a subject it never made sense to me, and it took another year and 2 resits before I attained the hallowed C grade that would allow me to pass through and on to University.

In all my time at university, I wrote precisely one essay that achieved a decent grade (a B, I believe). I don't remember the topic, but it was suitable vague enough for my imagination to suddenly catch fire. I saw a day and a night and a fall of snow. I saw cars carry men to work and children trudging through the crisp white, saw night fall and lights go on and off and then foxes and cats drew curving lines across the gardens and roads until the falling temperatures sent even them scuttling for the warmth of basket and den. Then a thin flurry of snow scrubbed everything white again, ready to being again.

I wrote this when I was slightly more than half my current age and it still remains in my memory, burnt there because it was something I had to say. I forced it out through fingers that never did what I wanted them to (every year, as the lore would have it, as the school year began, a shriek would emanate from the teacher's common area. And someone would wander over with a smile playing softly over the lips, gaze down at the workbook in their hands and say "Aah, so you've got Andrew Ducker this year. I see his handwriting's improved." and the shocked new teacher would disbelievingly reply "This is improved?").

When I went to university, I was given a computer (I'm a very lucky boy). A year later, I was writing all the time, overjoyed at the freedom that typing gave me. I can type at least 10 times as fast as I can write by hand. It's still nowhere near as fast as I think, but it's fast enough that I don't get completely bored and frustrated as I type. In fact, it's about the write speed that I can work out revisions as I type and get them right in my head before I get there. It also requires far less concentration - handwriting needs me to think about each line and curve that refuses to go anywhere near where I want it to. Keyboards have buttons big enough that I can be fairly inaccurate without it making a difference.

And then I stopped writing, for about 6 years. Because I thought too much about it and started thinking of my audience. And other people kept telling me I could "do something" with the writing. It stopped being fun and started being something I thought I should do. So I stopped.

Except that occasionally over that time something would get written. And I was still writing _to_ people, so occasionally I'd be a bit flowery or effectively write articles in the guise of newsgroup postings.

And then Joe pointed me at Livejournal, with the result that I arrived here a mere 2 days after him. And slowly, I got some interest back and now I'm actually enjoying getting things down on paper. I'm even getting somewhere with the plan to try and get down what it is I think about some subjects. Sure, it's taking a fair amount of time, and it's taking the help of my friends to point out the mistakes I make and the ways I'm unclear, but I'm confident that I can build on it and get somewhere. And even if I don't I'll learn a lot along the way.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I know exactly how you feel. My high school teachers would be shocked if they know I was a writer now. I got excellent grades in the combined english/history classes I took solely because I did exceedingly well on all of the tests. Also, being both left-handed and uninterested in such details, the legibility of my writing was legendarily poor.

The year after I took the qualifying exams for my Anthropology MA (a 12-our long test where you write continuously on whatever questions they wish to ask you - in 1 8-hour and 1 4-hour segment on two separate days) the grad department mandated that everyone have their exams typed after they had written them. I'm still deeply impressed that they managed to read my exam, between writing exceptionally rapidly and the massive writers cramp that developed after writing continuously at high speed for 6 hours meant that the last two hours of the first day was something that even I couldn't read.

Sadly, I also type slowly (perhaps 30-35 wpm) but that is perfectly fine for someone who composes at the keyboard (which to me is one of the marks of anyone who is either a professional or a serious writer).

[andrewducker]

Writing for 8 hours? The only times I set pen to paper at university was during exams and they were always terrible because of that. If I'd been allowed to type, my grades would have been much higher. I can't write for more than half an hour without my joints seizing up.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Actually, it was in 2 4 hour stretches with an hour for lunch, but that break didn't help much, by hour 6, I remember holding my pen in a truly unlikely fashion and that my writing looked like an oscilloscope tracing. It was most definitely a rite of passage/endurance contest. Studying for it taught me a little bit more about anthro but primarily it taught me to think like an anthropologist (which has far more to do with one's style of thought than with what one knows), which was almost certainly the goal.

[cleodhna.livejournal.com]

Three cheers for the Keyboard and Computer, for it was these fine invetions that liberated the mind of Andrew Ducker to grace the public domain in cypherous form!
I for one am glad you found your medium. I'm a solid keyboard convert, though handwriting has never been a problem (Mum taught us calligraphy when we were quite small, and we had a peculiar obsession with inventing and learning existing alternative alphabets).

[opusfluke.livejournal.com]

I write like I sneeze or have coffee- I'm halfway to doing it before I even know that I'm doing it. In my experience I type things one way and pen another. I have had the unpleasant experience of typing up a story I pen wrote and laughing at a thing and thinking "This is good! Who came up with that line? Uh... me? I don'r remember writing it..." I write and type at the same speed but in different ways and think five times faster. Then again there's the thoughts that the deeper aspects of my psyche churn up that I barely catch and those are to fast for me to notice unless meditating, half asleep or wired on the rush of just Creating. Never trust the education system- it drove me into psychiatric observation at 15 only to be prononced sane. But then Emperor Norton was pronounced sane too...

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Good to see that you are enjoying writing again.

I also suffered from the illegible handwriting thing, but managed a B in my Higher English and a C in my SYS. I write and type about the same speed, but my error rate is very high with typing. Of course the most I actually write these days is a shopping list or my workout plan. I know I have no stamina.

I used to write some passable (just) poetry, but you really need teenage angst (or mid-life crisis, or senile rage) to do that sort of thing and my miserable times are more lowkey these days, and less frequent. Everything's gone kind of blander and most things don't seem to matter so much - it is true that most bad things pass, and that their effect passes quicker the less you dwell upon them. I'm less prone to analysing myself, less confident of analysing other people (as I have realised just how different most are to me, it's too hard and I find people too weird) and not actually very interested in doing either.

On the plus side, I am far less prone to do stupid (or embarassing in the cringe-worthy sort of way) stuff than I once was.

Not great for writing material - maybe I have turned boring....