What follows is a rant I sent to a couple of friends last night.
"Ugh... I had to send it somewhere. I did my best to incorporate your comments and make it better but this MA is taking literally all my time. I sent it off anyway since I felt the need to get a rejection from somewhere while I lose myself in a 3000 word essay about my influences and how they've affected my writing practice (ugh again...). I really thought I was going to have more time for everything but my life is now lost in work, textbooks, novels, scripts, attempts to fit in prose, sleeping, editing friend's work. All the while I'm really feeling like it's taking me down one peg at a time and I'm losing confidence. I just feeling really lowbrow right now... which most of the time would be just fine... I just sent off a description of a 10 minute film I want to use for my script coursework and it really does feel genuinely awful. The images and concepts that felt so good in my head the last few days just feel really stark and obvious now I've tried to plan a story around them. I'm just in ideas crisis... Aaaargh. Yes. Stopping."
Getting that stuff off my chest did feel really good but this morning I was still feeling quite down. Two things picked me up. The first was the cookies. We've got a new tradition at work (we've done it twice). After pay day we have a bake off. This month we baked cookies. We ended up with seven different batches! The second thing that cheered me up was messages from friends. Yes sending rants like this out is kind of childish and kind of attention seeking but if people don't know how you're feeling then they can't offer support and we all need support. Sometimes all you need is someone else to pick you up a little to give you the distance you need to actually think about why you're feeling the way you do and think about how you can go about changing it.
Thinking about the essay now... I think I got myself tangled up in some idea of the technical side of writing that I thought I didn't have a clue about. The thing is, I do know what has influenced me and (as a friend reminded me) I am passionate about those things. I write about things that make me feel something. My influences are all things that have evoked strong feelings. All I can do is talk about how things make me feel and how this has affected my writing. Perhaps something more technical will come out of the exercise but if it doesn't then it's not something I should allow myself to worry about. You can't write about what's not there and true passion can't be faked.
The Anti-Rant
What follows is a rant I sent to a couple of friends last night.
"Ugh... I had to send it somewhere. I did my best to incorporate your comments and make it better but this MA is taking literally all my time. I sent it off anyway since I felt the need to get a rejection from somewhere while I lose myself in a 3000 word essay about my influences and how they've affected my writing practice (ugh again...). I really thought I was going to have more time for everything but my life is now lost in work, textbooks, novels, scripts, attempts to fit in prose, sleeping, editing friend's work. All the while I'm really feeling like it's taking me down one peg at a time and I'm losing confidence. I just feeling really lowbrow right now... which most of the time would be just fine... I just sent off a description of a 10 minute film I want to use for my script coursework and it really does feel genuinely awful. The images and concepts that felt so good in my head the last few days just feel really stark and obvious now I've tried to plan a story around them. I'm just in ideas crisis... Aaaargh. Yes. Stopping."
Getting that stuff off my chest did feel really good but this morning I was still feeling quite down. Two things picked me up. The first was the cookies. We've got a new tradition at work (we've done it twice). After pay day we have a bake off. This month we baked cookies. We ended up with seven different batches! The second thing that cheered me up was messages from friends. Yes sending rants like this out is kind of childish and kind of attention seeking but if people don't know how you're feeling then they can't offer support and we all need support. Sometimes all you need is someone else to pick you up a little to give you the distance you need to actually think about why you're feeling the way you do and think about how you can go about changing it.
Thinking about the essay now... I think I got myself tangled up in some idea of the technical side of writing that I thought I didn't have a clue about. The thing is, I do know what has influenced me and (as a friend reminded me) I am passionate about those things. I write about things that make me feel something. My influences are all things that have evoked strong feelings. All I can do is talk about how things make me feel and how this has affected my writing. Perhaps something more technical will come out of the exercise but if it doesn't then it's not something I should allow myself to worry about. You can't write about what's not there and true passion can't be faked.