What is Writing to Me?

I'm pretty sure I'm not the most amazing writer out there. In fact, I'm probably far from it. I love to write though. It's something I'm truly, truly, truly passionate about.

Why writing? (Of all things you choose writing, Hana? Really? Wow.) Writing is expression. Writing is feeling passionate about something and feeling the urge to sit down in front of a laptop with a blank document and a blinking 'I' and anxiously waiting for the words to come to you. Writing is taking out that journal or blank piece of paper and staring at the lines with a pencil at hand, ready to stain the page with scrawls of flamboyant letters, then words, and phrases that sound mellifluous and charming to the ear.

Writing is catapulting yourself into an imaginary world. Following heroes around and noting their actions and emotions. Scribbling down their adventures so fast in fear of not catching everything. Writing is hearing your characters plead in your head, telling you to write faster or include a certain other character in a scene. Writing is being rudely awakened in the middle of the night in cold sweat with an ingenious idea for an epic fantasy tale. You shuffle blindly around looking for that notepad and pen and then start writing frantically with only the faint glow of the streetlight outside to guide you.

Writing is also that deep desire to pump out the anger and blood-red rage boiling in yourself that has robbed your every will to be happy. It's the cathartic way of releasing these energies into a safer place. With every loop scratched into the paper every 't' angrily crossed, a sliver of that anger falls with it, until you are left in hollow silence. An empty mind.

Writing is that half-smile you get when thinking about a loved one. That biting of your bottom lip as you delicately write that poem, thinking of the best possible word to describe how deeply you feel about them.

Why do I love to write? It's the best way to express how I feel. I can make mistakes because there is a backspace button. I can accurately describe how I'm feeling without sounding like a broken record. Writing can be anything and everything at the same time. Writing is about impression, writing is about expression. Writing is about laughing at your own words. Writing is an art form. Writing is a sanctuary.

Now tell me how I can possibly NOT be passionate about writing. 

A Restless Mind, A Cathartic Solution

Today I had a lot on my mind. Nothing in particular and nothing that would interest you, but it was simply an abundant overflow of thoughts that flitted around in there. I couldn't handle it. I thought about how messed up the world is and how we're all going to die and all those wonderful positive thoughts of death and short life bubbled up. (Attention to sarcasm. I am well aware that they are not positive.) Then there was guilt and regret that slipped into the mix, which brought back dreaded memories. Overall it wrecked me. It wrecked me to the point where I just didn't care anymore. I mean, how do you free yourself from yourself?

So I opened up Microsoft Word and started typing. I typed for maybe half an hour straight. Whatever came to my demented state of mind was recorded. Unfinished sentences, horrible grammar, regrets, feelings, emotions, lies, truths, wishes, and so forth. After maybe about a single-spaced page and a half my mind grew quiet with the occasional thought lazily floating by about the weather or the need of a bodily function. I sighed out of relief and closed my eyes. The peace that followed was meditating.

I was at ease, totally content.

This is known as free association. In this case, it's a psychological technique that writers use to clear up the mind. No censorship. No grammar or spelling. No coherence necessary. Now some people like to reread what they write, others simply write it to unclutter their minds to clear up room for more focused writing. It's your decision whether you want to see the incoherence that flooded up your mind. For me personally, I wanted to unclutter to free up room for some hardcore novel writing. Rereading all of that will just drown me in those thoughts again. I saved the file though so I could read it some other day.

Another brilliant idea for using this technique is to let your imagination run wild. Give yourself a topic to write about and just write anything that comes to your mind. If it sounds creative and constructed, that's definitely a bonus, it doesn't have to be though. Once you feel like you've done what you can, give yourself a moment before rereading it. I've done this a couple times and found that in this reverie of writing, I find some sentences that are pretty worthy of note, unique, with interesting words and metaphors to complement them. It's like a morsel of gold in a jumble of muck and grime. You should try it sometime.

If you do end up trying this technique, maybe leave me a comment below on whether it worked or not? That would be fantabulous.

The Worlds Between Covers

Imagine yourself walking into a bookstore. You enter through those doors and immediately the warm smell of wood and newly printed books greet you. You stroll in and walk to your favorite section and run your finger along the spines of the neatly aligned books, each one whispering read me, each one pulling you with invisible fingers, gently caressing your mind with the wonders they contain. You then pass by a book that you've already read and it looks at you with friendly eyes as it catches your attention. Though you have already read it, you are fond of its contents. You open the book and are immediately reeled back into the world it contains. As you sift through your favorite parts you can't help but sigh in contentment at what you've experienced. You gently place the book back on the shelf and continue your stroll, but the book still lingers in the back of your mind.

This, my friends, is how books feel to me. This is my experience at a bookstore. Since I love to read a lot, and I buy more books than I can read at a given time, my room was crowded with them. A little too crowded for my own comfort, if I may add; so I bought a bookshelf to put in a corner of my bedroom. A place where I can experience the magic of my books anytime I want to. Just passing by it, I can hear the whispering of the hundred tales I own and it truly is magical.

Here's the stockpile before putting it on the shelf 

(well, the ones that were in my way anyway, the rest were in the storage area):

End result!

*Just in case any of you were wondering, yes that is Sigmund Freud sitting on the fourth shelf and on top of one of the piles of books. He's staring at the psychology books that I own, and in the top picture he's sitting on top of them. Just a little fyi. :-)

**The whitish wood you see is my temporary headboard, hence its lack of not matching with my shelf. Just saying.

Back to the Bones

Lately I've been trying to work through some bumps along the road. My life has become monotonous and boring. I have no motivation to do anything. All I'm doing is lollygagging, studying, wasting time online, eating, and sleeping. Why am I on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and all those sites for hours on end? Why am I complaining about procrastinating and having so much to do, rather than doing it all and getting it over with? Why do I always say I have to hit the gym and I don't even make an effort to try? Why do I say I have to get a job or an internship or something and I haven't even applied? Why do I make schedules and not follow through with them in the end?
See what I'm getting at here?
Those are some of the questions I've been asking myself. I'm not living anymore. I'm surviving, sure but I'm not really living with this day by day constant boringness and stress. So like in Wall-E, I'll say this:

I want to live my life by achieving my goals, not by idling around and only doing the necessities. 

I'm compiling a list of things that I want to change about myself. It's like I'm on a pursuit of happiness. I'm going to work slowly on getting things where I want them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not miserable, I'm just...not very...efficient and it's driving me crazy. So let's see how this plays out, and with any luck I might see the light. I'll keep you all posted on my progress and things I've figured out, and I'll put it under the label goals. 

Care to join me on this endeavor? Come along, it'll be fun!

Living

I feel energized

Revived

Full of love and hope

I feel alive 

Living, breathing, sighing, laughing

Treasures of this life

I take it in my hands and breathe

                                                                              Its sweet air lingering 

                                                                          Breathtaking

                                                                        Life

                                                                           It's a beautiful thing.

Writer's Touch

A lot of people tell me that I have a "Writer's Touch", but what does that really mean?

There seems to be a very fine line between writing something and speaking it. Illustrating something and simply describing it or simply talking about it. I've recently thought over the differences and decided to blog about it; here's what I came up with.


Detail
Having a writer's touch means that you show enough detail to allow someone to visualize your scenario more clearly. So, if you have a sentence like, "Sally's dog explored the park." You'd write it, "Sally's dog padded along the park trail." So now, you know exactly what the dog was doing, and you know that he's walking gently and curiously along a trail. He's not all over the place in your mind now, so this narrows the reader's vision to what you want to illustrate.

Strong Words V. Weaker Words
This one's simply, can you take a basic word and substitute it for a more complex word that gives what you're trying to say more meaning?
It's like replacing the word "crowded" for the word "bustling" if you're talking about say, New York City. I mean think about it, the words give you different vibes. Crowded seems more like stuffy and uncomfortable, whereas bustling gives you the idea that it's a city that's busy at work, doing things, everyone's out and about. So yeah, it's crowded, but is it that to the point of uncomfortableness? Probably not. So the word "bustling" gives the impression that the city's full of people, but it gives sort of the business-like impression of walking the street, rather than the "crowded waiting room" scene. Am I making sense?
This brings me to another point:

Are swear words okay?

I've recently been...er...shamed, for using the so-called "d-word" in one of my posts. Let me assure you there is a reason for every word I choose to write. Had I thought another word was more suitable, I would have changed it. Everyone I know has the impression that I don't swear, and it's true. I never have conversations where I'm spitting out swear words. Writing is different though. Writing is about getting the right impression across, and the words a writer chooses aren't always ones that they use conversationally, andd they're not always representative to the author's voice. I wouldn't use the word "damn" conversationally when talking to people, but when I write, I use it in context to give off an angry, frustrated vibe. Had the word not been chosen, it would be taken as a light statement. Now, I'm not saying that swearing is right, but I'm also against the idea that it's wrong in some cases. Note that in some contexts, how it it bad if I'm not addressing a person? I was addressing a bad habit, so in all essence, bad habits be damned! Okay?

Showing, Not Telling
Similar to adding detail, having a writer's touch means that you have the ability to choose words and formword phrases based on what kind of a vibe you want in the sentence. For an example, if you're talking about a situation that's happened, you want to let on that it was boring without actually saying it was. You have to make what happened sound really boring, and people would catch on. But I'm not saying make your writing boring but use words that give off a boring vibe...
I'm not making sense here.
Okay take a look at this: "I was bored and tired, so I slept." This sentence is totally fine, but I literally told you why I slept. Imagine if I wrote it like this: "After a long day of studying, I sat on my bed and looked around the shabby place I call my room.  I sighed. God I need to clean this place up. I thought to myself. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. I'll probably clean it later, I'm not feeling up to it. I took one last look at my room and yawned. I lay back in my bed and drifted off."
Now people can make inferences about why you fell asleep, making your writing more interesting that before. Obviously it's all about context. You wouldn't write all that if someone asked you why you're sleeping during the day, but say you're writing a story. Wouldn't you rather have all that detail to put the reader in the scene and have them immersed in your writing? That's the touch you need.


Shorter Sentences Vs. Longer Ones
This best represents the idea:

"This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important."


Moral of the story? Variety of sentence length gives music to the writing.

Writer's Voice
This is something that can't really be elaborated on or taught. It's your personal voice when you write. A voice that people would recognize as yours without knowing you wrote it.


To sum it all up, writing isn't only about the grammar and expressive punctuation that you write, but how you write it and how advanced your diction (word choice) is. I'm still working on mine, don't get me wrong, I'm not an expert, but giving your work a writer's touch gives it a flare that can keep readers, well, reading. As a final example, there's a difference between saying "She was hungry so she ate an apple" versus "Hunger gnawed at her stomach and clawed at her insides. She grabbed an apple from the basket sitting on the nearby nearby table and took a bite from the juicy inside, the sweet juice dribbling from her chin as she savored every bite."

What would you rather read?

Thing is though, some people call this fluff, specifically when it's used in a college paper. Trust me, my professors hate it when I write like this, as they want the paper straight to the point. Problem is, what's the fun in that?

So I do it anyway, but I tone it down a bit.

Well, anyway, if you have any other ones, comment below and I'll add them. :)

Tomorrow?

So there's this problem I'm having...
I NEED to study. I NEED to write. I NEED to work out. I NEED to do things I like. I NEED to get organized. I NEED to have a social life. I NEED to work out my ambitions. I NEED. I NEED, I NEED, I NEED. Why can't I ever DO? 
I always tell myself, "Tomorrow I'm gonna start fresh. Tomorrow's a new day, and I'll start doing the things I want to do and the things I need to do. I'll be organized, punctual, happy. Life will be good from then on." 
*Said yesterday.
**And the day before.
***And the day before that.
****And the day that came before that.
It's infinite.










Moral of the story? Life doesn't work that way. 


You know how life works?


You have to work it out gradually, get into habit of things, which could take weeks. Developing habits is one of those little stupid things that if you don't make solid, they won't stick, meaning you'll go back to whatever bad habit you were doing before.


Fun isn't it?


You need motivation to get things done. You need to believe whatever you're doing has a benefit and a goal you need to reach. That pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (which by the way, DOES NOT EXIST). It's all very annoying. What if I have no motivation? 


Sometimes life is weird that way. Whatever, I'll start fresh tomorrow. Or not. Er...

Upgrade!

Exciting news: I decided to take blogging more seriously and finally bought a domain for my site! Instead of the typical .blogspot insert, my site is now www.eternalmusing.com. If you log in to the original one (aimless-reverie), it'll redirect you to this domain.


Anyways, with new priorities comes a need for more information. I needed to consult the experts in the field of blogging and came across one particular one that inspired me to go through this: Blogging Bookshelf. This site has everything you need to know about blogging and anything you might like to change in your blog to increase traffic, have people commenting on your posts, and become well-known in the blogosphere. Now I don't typically blog about blogging because it's out of my niche and I'm fairly new to it myself, but I felt the need to credit Tristan, the creator of the site, for his insights and aspirations that gave me that push to take blogging to the next level.

In the next few weeks, I'll be tweaking up my blog a bit here and there like changing formats and making it more individual (instead of a blogger template) to my style. If you regularly follow my posts, thank you so much for your support, I wouldn't have gotten to this point without you.

Comment below and tell me what you think!

• Any comments on this new endeavor?
• Any suggestions on posts you want to see in the future?
• What niche do you consider my blog to be in?

Relaxation Blip

Bubbling soap floated gently around you as you lowered yourself into the warm bath. A sweet lavender scent lingered with every breath you took. You lay your head back against the tub and sigh a relieving, relaxed sigh as all the worries of the world melted away at that very moment. You savor that moment a second longer until--

You are shaken awake.
"Hey, get up. Why are you sleeping on your laptop? Just go to bed."



WHYY? Leave. Me. Alone.

I Hate Spiders

I'm deathly afraid of spiders. If I see one inside I would probably leave the house. It's something I can't get over, really. I tried to get over it by looking at pictures of spiders, but I only broke out in goosebumps and something I like to call "mental hives". Thank god I don't break out in hives, but my arms and thighs get really itchy, but there's nothing there, and it's an all around terrible experience. I will avoid spiders, and I did for the longest time.

Yeah right, my mind troll sneered, your next blog post is about spiders. It needs a picture! Go on...type spiders in Google Images. Better yet, you want a BIG spider on your blog, search that. 

Worst five minutes of my life. 

My mind was all like:

PROBLEM?

Why am I posting this exactly? Well you'll find out soon enough. :)

True Love

I found this really cute quote by Bob Marley. It pretty much summarizes the true sweetness and tenderness of love.  

"Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.” 
-Bob Marley

Headache Blip

As I was typing away, the sudden realization of the blearing light from my laptop finally got to me. The throbbing came soon after that. I'm not one who gets headaches often, so when they come, all Hell breaks loose. 


I thought maybe it was time to get off the computer. Maybe get some shut-eye. Snuggle up with a book under dim lamplight with a mug of hot cocoa. 

Suck it up. A voice hissed in my head. Stop dreaming and get back to work.