Every couple of months, I get the itch to write. Not just book review blogs or status updates or journal entries, but real, honest-to-goodness storytelling. I start to sit around with an open notebook or a blank word processor file and hope to come up with something. Anything. I usually end up writing things like this, which are about writing rather than something actually creative. Or just making to-do lists.
I was excited to write for NaNoWriMo this past fall, but ended with utter and complete failure. I had an entire plot and character lineup, with charts inspired by J.K. Rowling's HP spreadsheets, for my novel - but I think I only wrote a dismal 140 words. I couldn't get any of my thoughts to translate to story. But now it's been about six months, and I'm starting to get that feeling where words well up inside you like tears on the brink of spilling. Any second now the dam will break, and I need to figure out how to put all that water to good use.
A "good use" that has been haunting me from sometime during college to the present is creative non-fiction. Maybe haunting isn't the right word; maybe it's more like persistently lingering in hopes of inspiring. I'm not sure anymore.
What I do know is that it's one of my favorite genres. Somehow I've accumulated nearly a dozen creative non-fiction books, ranging from Capote's classic In Cold Blood to modern favorites like Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. And I love them all. They're honest and gritty and beautiful and true to life, for the most part. There are no perfect white picket fence towns, or flawless damsels in distress, or overexaggeratingly evil nemesis. It's real people doing real things and having real thoughts. Fantastic!
The only downside to creative non-fiction is that I am terrible at it. Mostly because - shocker! - my real life is boring. It's true. I read things, I bake things. It's not all that glamorous. Then the other day I read a post on Twitter about someone blogging their way through a book, and I thought, maybe I should try writing through an experience. Lots of people have done it - Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about an experience in Eat Pray Love (I finished it, blog is coming soon!), Julie Powell blogged her way through The Art of French Cooking, A.J. Jacobs lived biblically for a year and penned a book - heck, even Thoreau wrote Walden about his experiences on the pond way back in 1854.
So, here's my question to you: What should I write through? What would you be interested in reading my reaction to? You're already seeing my book reviews, but I'm fishing for something that requires more than one update a month. I want to force myself to think more and write more. Any suggestions?
Leave me some comments! I want to know what you're thinking.
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