thoughts and ideas and things and such.

I'm currently working on about five different stories in my head, two of which are fiction.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm starting to fall in love with my fictional character a little bit.  She's not me - the only thing we have in common is that we both dance ballet.  But she has strengths and weaknesses that I don't, and I love getting to know her.  I've named her, but I'm going to change it because, funny enough, her name doesn't fit who she is becoming.  I've got about twenty pages related to her story right now (some actual scenes, mostly just back story), and I'm beginning to think that I might actually want to write out this whole thing.

Then there's the comical creative nonfiction piece I'm working on.  All of my stuff is usually so heavy or narcissistic.  I want to write something that exposes my heaviness and narcissism in a funny, and revealing way.  Unfortunately, due to the nature of this piece, I don't think I'll be able to release it.  Maybe ever.  But it's good practice.

Someone said that the best way to get over a person is to turn them into literature (yes it was Henry Miller and yes I looked it up after watching 500 Days of Summer).  I'm currently not hung up on any ex-boyfriends, thank GOODNESS (sometimes a two and a half year relationship takes 18 months to get over... when you're Jen Gulbrandsen...), but there is a mildly poisonous itch in my life that I simultaneously love and hate scratching.  Like most people with personalities, I enjoy a little bit of conflict, but I also complain because, well, it makes life pretty conflicted.  I'm still an essayist.  And my ideas for my two novels definitely feel like essays quilted together.  But it will be really fun to let myself do whatever I want to this person.  Note: this could backfire.  But for now, the idea of writing a character I can't stand sounds really fun.

Finally, I've got two ideas in my head, just brewing around.  I almost wrote one of them out today, and in a way, I wish I had started.  The spectrum of my emotions was a broad one today, particularly in self-actualization and validation, and I'm scared I won't be able to create the original piece as imagined in my mind.  Too much changed in there, and I fear losing the raw truth of current emotional state.  But there's always the argument that hindsight brings more truth and understanding.

Who knows anymore.  What I do know is this: I am a writer.  I might not be good.  I might be great.  I might never be published beyond a blogspot address.  But at my core, I synthesize life experience and talents and abilities and educational pursuits and relationships and faith and morality and philosophy into sentences and paragraphs with pretentious punctuation.

I don't know what I want.  I love too many things.  I have too many interests.  Maybe it's time I let that be my strength.

Maybe it's time I just write and write and write and stop worrying about who or what or why or how.