The Penis Mightier

The end of November is quickly approaching. We are right in the midst of the holiday season between Thanksgiving and your December holiday of choice (Hanukkah, Yule, Christmas… whatever your flavor) where people eat and shop a lot. This is also when I start my yearly debate over whether or not to send out a holiday letter.

Now on another topic, before we move into December, November is National Novel Writing Month. It also has a lot of random holidays for writing such as “I Love to Write Day.” This wonderful emphasis on writing, combined with my internal argument over sending a holiday letter, has made me realize that I have never yet explained to you folks WHY I am occasionally (I swear I’ll get better) writing a blog.

I do love to write. I’ve been writing fanfiction off and on since early high school. I’ve written quite a few short stories, and started quite a few novels that I will probably never finish. During college I had my assignments to write personal essays, David Sedaris style, and I realized those were my new love. Because there are two big problems when it comes to me and writing:

1. I have absolutely no discipline when it comes to writing. I like to write. I can write short things. However, when it comes to writing anything too long I don’t have the focus to come back, make myself sit down, and just write. I could complete stories for college because they were due for a class. Now I have nothing due, and it doesn’t really matter if I finish something or not. I really hope to work past this at some point. I have ideas I’d really like to get out there someday.

2. It may seem strange, but I have no confidence in my voice as a writer. In fact, I had the fear for the longest time that I did not have a voice at all. I felt like anyone could write what I wrote. They were just sentences on a page, with no life or meaning.

Considering my dream was to become a decent, semi-famous author, that was totally quotable and eventually had a movie or HBO series based off my books, I should have a good writing voice. Think of the “Pen Is Mightier” category on Jeopardy. You recognize quotes from books not because you memorize the entire book (unless you're lame and have no friends), but because the voice of the quote or character stands out.

This issue with my writing voice is why I write this blog, and why I used to send a family Christmas letter ever year.

The Christmas letter was a huge issue in my household growing up. It was something my parents decided I should do, and thus something I fought bitterly against. It normally ended with me being confined to a chair in front of the computer until I typed one out.

They weren’t long letters. Just one page announcements about my family and what had been going on for the year. Of course I felt like we had fairly stagnant lives. There’s only so many ways to say we’re all working excessively at our various jobs that haven’t changed. It was with the Christmas letter that I first started to feel like I had a bit of a writing voice, because I tended to write it different ways to keep myself amused. And the response was overall positive. Everyone in the larger family started clamoring for the yearly letters and said how much they loved them. I have to admit when I moved off on my own and my mother started writing the letters, it just wasn’t the same. I then decided I should continue to do letters for my own adventures, and have done 2 so far since moving out.

However this year, I’ve been blogging. I started blogging because I was impressed with my friend Erin’s witticism and thought this would be a good method for continuing to improve my written voice. This was a chance to write short entries (good for my attention span), but write consistently (good for building up writing stamina), and discuss whatever I want. So far, it’s been mostly a success. There are certainly posts that I enjoyed more than others, but if my goal is to further develop my voice I think I’m starting to get there. One of the best complements I’ve gotten so far is that my friend Callie has told me whenever she reads my posts, the whole time she just hears me speaking in her mind because it sounds so much like how I talk. So perfect!!

Of course there’s still more work to do in my voice training. Once one gets a voice, you then need to be able to change the expressions and tone to achieve different results.

I think I struggle with this so much in writing because I DON’T have this issue talking. I know I’ve discussed before that apparently I cannot tell a good story. Well the truth is: I suck a bit at conversations, but actual story telling? I excel. I have a very expressive voice. The voice itself still sucks, but by god when you hear me speak there are emotions and nuances and funny voices all over the place. I want that in my writing. I want to keep the reader involved and entertained. And I know I can get there eventually if I finally just knuckle down and practice.

So that, my friends, is why I write this blog.

Of course how is this tied into this year’s argument over whether or not to send a holiday letter? Well, if I’m writing the blog, I don’t really need the practice of also sending out a holiday letter. Plus, I feel like a large portion of the people I would send it to are actually reading this, and they know a lot of what’s been going on this year. But I do so like sending out pretty cards with the letter… hmm.

To end though, I thought I’d give you a little early holiday present. If you haven’t ever watched the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy skits (we watched them A LOT in college, you have no idea), here’s one of my favorites where Sean Connery isn’t quite clear on the aforementioned pen category. As Sean wisely says, what matters is, "DOES IT WORK?" I think this is an excellent mindframe for writing as well. Does it work? The final result should be - yes!