Life Worth Living

Half of this blog is a blog. The other half is stories. From time to time it’s occurred to me to separate things out into two blogs (less confusion that way) but for the time being, I content myself with one.

They’re not stories so much as short tales, and they’re not tales so much as scenes, or descriptions. The inspiration for one strikes me when I listen to music, when I’m watching TV, reading a book, sitting in class, laying in bed. I rarely have to actively pursue inspiration; mostly it just comes to me. I dont pretend to be an author; I’m a writer. I like to think there’s a distinction. Writing is my art, my expression.

Most of my ‘stories’, as I call them, are about love. Sometimes they’re about friendship, fraternity, fidelity, loyalty. Sometimes they’re about nothing at all. Conversation I’m not so good at; nor am I good at humor or (if I care to admit it) plot. What I’m good at is describing things. Painting scenes in different ways, rehashing points until they’re all but dead, delving into the depths of angst. That’s the second thing I’m good at: angst. I write about heartbreak and longing and dashed hopes and regret. I write about joy and ecstasy and hopes and dreams—strong emotions are my forte.

My writing seems to be mostly explorations of character. I write cliches, but I write them well. Almost always, the stories that take form in my head comes through my fingertips in an entirely different form, and my stories dont turn out how I imagined them; sometimes this is a good thing. Rarely, they turn out exactly how I wanted them to. Some stories I’m a little embarrassed of, and others I’m irrationally (or rationally) proud of.

Sometimes I write just for the sake of writing. Mostly, I write because I have ideas bouncing around in my head that demand in shrill little voices for me to let them come out. I write for fun when it boils down to it, and really, that’s just the way it should be.

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Penny Romance: The adolescent, cliched love stories.

Sob Stories: The tearjerkers.

She: This is a special category. These stories are sometimes thought out and sometimes flow-of-consciousness. The “she” in the stories—that’s me, my inner person, my soul, whatever. The “She” stories (named after the first one I wrote) are usually metaphors, however obscure, for my state of mind at the time. I think I do them when I’ve particularly strong emotions I dont know how else to vent. Sometimes I dont even know what they mean, but because I put so much of myself into them, these are the stories I treasure the most, in a way.