False Start

False Start: An unsuccessful attempt to begin something.

It seems as though my life has been all a-go since I created this space. Excuses. Excuses. I dreamed I’d be writing all these telling tales and haiku and the like.

Instead, my days are spent teaching 16 year olds how to find voice in their own writing, and my nights are spent reading and fiddling around with my many stringed instruments.

A big trip ahead means surely I’ll put pen to paper.

I resolved that this year would be all about words and not pictures, but all I seem to be doing is taking pictures, and my participation in the February-photo-a-day trend isn’t helping.

If reading leads to writing, I should have a lot to say pretty soon. Next up: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt.

An Introduction:

          During my time in Italy, I studied writing. It asked a lot of me because I’d never really done any creative writing, just essays, really. I wrote a short story that I’m unwaveringly proud of- a collection of letters between estranged lovers Franny and James. This was such a new thing to me, and I remember sitting up in my bed, late at night, typing the first letter and it was so simple. It wrote itself. The characters were there, alive and feeling and dreaming and hoping and struggling and it was all happening before my eyes and faster than my brain could articulate it to my fingers and back.
        Later, I was asked to write poetry. I decided to write short, rhyming (read: easy) poems for each city that I visited and explored with my friends. It’s funny. I thought I was getting out of having to really write poetry, but what I ended up with is a collection of poems so dear to me that I read over them all the time. They are so much better than pictures. I’ve continued this style of writing, writing little birthday poems to friends and family, and spur-of-the-moment poems during my long commute to work.
        In that spirit, I’ve decided I’d like to write in 2012, instead of take pictures. I started my other tumblr  as a place for photographs, at first sort of serious, and then more journal-y, and then just nonsense and what-have-you. With the new year, I’m resolving to write something every day. Not blog posts. Not journals. But poems, or letters, or stories.
        Here goes.