But Practicing Is Hard!

The Man once had a coworker who asked me the question "if you could do anything - including the stuff you're not talented enough to do right now - what would you want to do with your life?"

I told him I wanted to be a writer, and I meant it.

Writing letters, e-mails, and Facebook updates comes easy to me; it's just the beautiful stuff that is hard.  Every time I try to write something thought-provoking, it comes off as pretentious.  Not even a good pretentious; my words are vapid and fall flat.  I keep thinking that I have these great ideas for stories and then when I try to put the words down it's just...Twilight-esque.  Hard to create a novel on the grey lines of war when the only dialogue you can come up with could have been written by a twelve-year-old.

Or there are those moments of utter clarity when the words seem to flow from my fingertips so beautifully and I write for an hour or so (usually these moments happen when I'm sleep-deprived).  I get so excited about the world I'm creating, and then when I get a few hours of sleep in me I re-read my masterpiece and realize how ridiculous it is.  It's quite...well, I was going to say infuriating but that's not really it.  It's depressing.  I feel this gigantic urge to create, but I don't have the ability.

Then it hit me today; I don't practice writing.  I dabble, but I don't practice.  Barring select individuals, I'm pretty sure all greatness comes with the price of time, humiliation, and frustration until you get that stinking thing right.  I see great writers, great musicians, great artists, and I automatically assume that they just "have it;" I don't know why it never occurred to me that they "have it" due to a shed-load of work put in (heard that on Doctor Who today; decided to start using it.  Not so sure on "squeaky bum time" yet).

So, here's my plan: I'm going to write something every day.  Maybe a short story, maybe a poem, maybe a chapter of a greater plot, but I'm going to be writing.  I'll leave a sample now and maybe put a new one down monthly so I can track my progress.  The following story was from a sleep-deprived moment.

I walked solemnly down the dirt path.  It was dusk; dinner time.  My hand tightly clenched the wooden handle as I tried to push my feelings of guilt aside.  We needed to eat.  There was no other option.

The gate creaked open, causing sparrows in a nearby orchard to take flight.

As I entered the enclosure I could hear it; the sound of tens of quickened hearts thumping softly.  I knelt down and wrapped my hand around one's neck.  "I'm sorry.  I really am."  Its pulse beat faster and faster as I sunk my trowel in the soft earth beside it, pushed down, and lifted the carrot from its ground.  An arrhythmic drumbeat filled my ears, then faded into silence.

The worst part of death isn't the screaming; it's feeling something's heart die in your hands and knowing that you caused it.

*Prompt taken from a student's question: Do plants have hearts?  They don't, but if they did vegetarians would still be safe - yay Soylent!