Semester Review

It's been a long first semester at school. And even though I'd like to say that's why I haven't written in five months, it's not the reason. Basically, I'm just terrible at keeping up to date with anything remotely journal like. But there has been a lot going on in terms of my life as some sort of writer/poet/author person so I might as well update. Brace yourselves, it's going to be a long post.

Literary Magazines and Aesthetics and Change
This past semester I joined two literary magazines but I can confidently say that next semester I will only be on the board of one. The one I'm staying on is totally chill and fun and people there are willing to look at every piece with an open mind. They aren't stuck up just because they're the staff and they're ready to give every piece a chance. The other magazine, the one I'm leaving, is basically the opposite. The staff is pretty pretentious and it's a struggle to even get them to vote "maybe" on anything. I mean, it's not like I write anything Pulitzer worthy and I'm pretty sure that even if their stuff is great it's not the best. They shouldn't just trash other people's work, especially when poetry (which is most of the submissions) is so personal. Everything should be looked at with the hope that it will be good enough to get put in the magazine. But enough ranting. I think that the basic thing I've learned from being on both editorial boards is that aesthetics vary wherever you are. My high school's aesthetic seems to be different than what I'm finding at college. I guess the struggle now is to decide whether or not I want to tweak how I write so that I can be accepted where I am now, or if I'm proud of my stuff and I believe that it can shine wherever I am. Or maybe I don't need to be so defiant and I can just realize that I believe in what I write but maybe it needs to be edited. Everyone can always grow as a writer so this is a good chance for me to keep experimenting. However, that doesn't mean that I'll get discouraged if one person doesn't like something I've done because it doesn't mean someone else won't like it.

Inspiration
It is really hard to get inspired in college for some reason. Seriously, it feels like college sapped all the creativity out of me. There are nights where I would stay up late writing one bad poem after the other. All the while I kept meaning to post about how much harder it is to force yourself to write poetry than it is to sit down and work on a story. On that note, I was able to plug away at Guardians a bit and hopefully by the end of my vacation I will have reached a place where the end is actually in sight. But back to poetry. Somehow, I can't seem to find that flow that I had. I used to have these days where all I could do was write and all my thoughts seemed to want to form a poem. But now it seems like everything I write is forced and terrible. Now I don't know how bad anything actually is. It may be that I'm just getting too critical of myself because I'm suddenly super afraid of what everyone else thinks. On the other hand, sitting down and deciding to write a poem never really works. I guess I don't really have a solution for this problem. One thing I do know is that this too shall pass and I'll find my creative spark again.


Being Different, Being Special
In high school, writing defined me, especially during my senior year. I was editor of the literary magazine, helped run the school's poetry slam, and did three separate projects based on creative writing. People knew that I was someone who wrote and it was what made me special. This uniqueness was especially important to me because in the middle school I went to you weren't considered talented unless you were athletic or you could sing. Now, I've never been athletic and despite my best efforts, I can't sing to save my life. But writing wasn't considered a talent in middle school so basically I just felt unspecial and talentless. High school showed me that writing was a talent and that I had something special. At least, I thought I did until college. At the school I go to there are an unbelievable amount of amazing writers. Suddenly, writing isn't this thing that a few people do, it's something that basically everyone does and they do it well. That kind of knowledge can take a toll on an aspiring author's self-esteem. Over the past four years writing has become such a crucial part of who I am that if I discovered that I wasn't actually a good writer then I wouldn't know who I was and that's a really scary thought. I guess it's just a big fish in a little pond moving into a bigger pond but that doesn't make the move any more comfortable. I guess like I said before, you just have to trust in your writing and believe that it can shine anywhere.


So, there it is. The longest blog post I've written in almost a year spanning over two days (because I started writing at 11:40 PM and it's now 12:03 AM) and covering five months of thoughts, reflections, and conclusions. Who knows what will come next for me. One thing I do know is that it could easily be another five months until I write here again. Hopefully not, but one thing that college has taught me is that there's no sense in trying to plan anything, it's more enjoyable to just let things happen on their own time.