Let It Be

So last month I talked about my search for a story. I talked about how I start stories and never finish them, and I'm always in search for new inspiration. One of my friends mentioned the old age advice of "writing what you know", which is very true. It's interesting, because it seems as if that is what it really and truly comes down to. And it's not that you necessarily have to identify with every element of the story, but that its overall nature is a reflection of you. So where am I going with all this?

Well this weekend I have been diligently working on my ten page Mass Media Law paper (which is not very fun to write, by any means), and I was looking for an example of block quoting, so I ended up looking at one of my English papers from ENGL2030 (Experience of Literature). For those of you who don't know or who have forgotten, I took an honors section of this sophomore level English class in my first semester of college. I had already received college credit from the freshman level English classes, so there I was. My writing had improved during my senior year of high school thanks to Mrs. Wolff's AP English class, but I had no idea how much more improvement I still needed for the college level.

I was challenged in my writing, in my thinking, and that class has been the most rewarding of my college career yet. Never have I learned so much about myself as I did in that class. And yet, I had actually almost forgotten until I stumbled across my papers from that class and looked at them. For our last paper, we were supposed to do some sort of creative writing, where we worked in a few of the pieces we had read and what we learned from the class, and so I settled for a format that was risky but 100% me: a diary form. My professor loved it. I thought I would share excerpts from this paper, because I found it interesting...

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November 1, 2005

Dr. Therrien gave us back our mid-terms today, which was exclusively essay as well. She kept me after class to let me know that I had the best exam in the class. Wow. Nice compliment, needless to say! I still only made a B+, which just shows how much she expects out of me.

Anyhow, she said that my essays in the mid-term were looser than my normal writing, and that I took more risks- and that was a good thing and more effective. So apparently that is the approach that she wants me to take with the final paper. I just cannot imagine being as loose with a paper as I was with spur-of-the-moment, timed essays. I just wrote down whatever came to my head. Apparently my initial thoughts are my best thoughts and I should run with those instead of second guessing myself.

I wonder how many times I had a really cool thought, but then dismissed it as dumb and moved on to something else. Now this is a scary thought: what if I am actually missed out on something because I began to think too much about the idea and thought that it was stupid?

November 17, 2005

I really feel like the girl in “Patterns”. She too hungers to reveal herself to someone. When she finally finds someone who loves her for who she is and understands her, he dies. So now she feels that she must hide behind her usual charade, behind the dress that confines her like a cage.

I think everyone holds back a part of themselves from the world. I think that we are all afraid of what others will think. It can hurt to allow our true colors show, especially if others consider it “uncool”, “unfitting”, or “undignified”.

So I guess that “be who you are” would be one of my messages to the world. It sounds so cliché because everyone says it, but seriously, do any of us truly live it out? Do I? Probably not. I know that there are parts of myself I am afraid to let others see.

I’ve rarely allowed people to read the stories I’ve written. After all, they might reject me. Though I seem so psyched now to share my message with the world, in reality, I am probably still scared to death. What if I tell others to be themselves, but they decide that they are totally not in sync with the other messages I want them to believe? What if they think everything I have to say is a bunch of crap? Does that make me a failure? Really, who can define me as a failure? I am starting to realize that there is really no reason for me to feel that way. After all, if just one person grasps what I am trying to say, then I think that makes me a success. Even if that just means that I have learned more about myself.

November 26, 2005

Well, if there is one thing I have learned from my English class, it’s that I should just go with my initial thoughts- to let loose and let the ideas flow! So I guess while I should have initially written my paper on the day I began to think about the possibility of writing it in diary form, I decided to just sit down and do it today. I am just going to sit down and write. I think my ideas really do flow the best whenever I just sit down and write them down without worrying about the technical aspect. After all, I can always go back and spruce it up. I think one reason why I, oddly enough, love to read my old journals is because I wasn’t trying to write something great, I was just writing what I felt.

This reminds me of the response I wrote for class over the poem “Patterns”. Absolutely nothing was coming to me that night, and I just had no clue what to write about. And then I remembered how much I liked the poem “Patterns”, thought about our class discussion and my personal thoughts on it, and wrote what I felt. At first I was trying too hard to explain the poem in chronological order, but once I stumbled upon a really great thought, I went back and deleted the boring, unnecessary things and expounded on the idea I had run across while rambling.

I feel as if that response is the epitome of what I’ve learned in English this semester. I have almost always been pretty confident in myself, yet I definitely tend to hold back a part of myself. As I have been adjusting to college, I have definitely been opening up more, slowly but surely. I think I am learning a lot about what it means to live a full life of freedom and joy, but I also think I have quite a long time before I can really and fully grasp what that means.

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It may not be the best paper ever written, but it was totally me. And the message was valuable and I don't think about it enough: be yourself. So simplistic, so cliche, so elementary, and yet we are always hiding ourselves, second guessing ourselves, and not letting others around us see who we are. We need to stop being so afraid. We need to let it go... and let it be.