Monday 25 June 2012

Like making a bed

Happy Monday, all. I haven't posted anything for the last few days, and I'm sorry about that. I had some important stuff going on this weekend so blogging had to take the back seat. I know that I probably could have tried to push myself to do it anyways, but if I did I suspected that my writing would turn out subpar, which isn't especially enjoyable for either you or I. Also, I'm very much a perfectionist with my writing. Generally, I can be confidently and correctly categorized as a type-B personality. However, when it comes to any sort of work I have to do, be responsible for, and live with the effects of afterwards, I'm type-A through and through.

Things, to put it mildly, have been pretty super-fantastic with me over the past little while. Lots on my mind, but in a good way rather than a bad. I've had a lot of time for thinking lately and have found myself up late frequently doing just that. That and writing. Not blog writing, unfortunately, just writing writing. I occasionally go through phases where almost every night I have a million little ideas running through my head and I absolutely have to record them. . . or at least attempt to. These things come to me as I'm ready to fall asleep and if I can repeat them to myself often enough, I will attempt to actually roll over, switch on my bedside light, dig out my journal, and write down a close enough approximation to whatever I was thinking/feeling/remembering in a way that I feel is original and pleasing enough satisfy me as to the fact that it was worth jotting down and that I can now go to sleep, unburdened of said phrase my brain has been arranging. It sounds rather horrible, doesn't it? It's a very comfortable feeling though, being able to create something, even a line, that I just love, and then having the will power to refuse to let it slip my mind until I have tucked it away for the night. I put it to bed with black pen. It can rest on my lined paper as though between its own cotton sheets.

Normally I think of the title of each post before I begin to type. That way, I give myself a starting place and allow myself to consider the quotation as I write; expanding and exploring it, probing at it, looping it in and through my ideas until I am satisfied. Today I didn't have anything definite to put up in that little "Post title" rectangle, but now I do. Right now I'm reading Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife for possibly the third or fourth time (I've mentioned more than once that this is my favourite novel). My own description at the end of my last paragraph has reminded me of a line in this novel that I find particularly comforting: "Turning each page is like making a bed, an enormous expanse of paper slowly rises up and over." A good friend of mine has told me more than once that folding one's laundry is cathartic because it mimics putting one's life in order. Writing itself can be like this for me; like making a bed, it is relaxing and orderly.

What are you reading at the moment? I am genuinely interested to know as well how you construct your blog posts. Some of mine involve OOTDs, etc. and so I simply take the pictures and mould the rest around that visual story. For those that don't, as I've mentioned in this post already, I just find a pleasing quotation and then am off and running with it until I reach what feels like the end of my thought or the bottom of this bottomless, virtual typing box.

-C

2 comments:

  1. I think everyone approaches writing blog posts in a different way. I rarely - if ever - sit down with an idea in mind. I generally just sit at my computer and type whatever comes to mind! I'm lucky that I can do that, I think; I don't think everyone is as naturally chatty in their writing as I am :) As for titles, I find those harder... Mainly because I think it's difficult to come up with titles that somehow relate to an outfit, and the post content, while remaining original!
    xox,
    Cee

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know what you're saying about chatty writing! That's how my posts sometimes end up so long! haha All true, thanks for leaving your opinion!

      Delete