a time for introspection.

[cymry]

i've been playing with the Random button on LJ for the past few days, and i've discovered one thing: while there are a lot of young, 15 year old kindergoths and other such nonsense out there, so too are there a whole range of highly intelligent, creative, inspiring people out there who make me wish i was other than i am.

and i refuse to let that attitude take me down.

admittedly, i need to refocus my creativity. i haven't touched any of my writing in over a month, i haven't drawn anything in at least 6, and i haven't designed anything in over a year. i'm tumbling downhill with no roots in sight, nothing to stop my headlong plunge into the abyss that is mediocrity. i hate it, i don't want to be there, yet reality intrudes in such a way that the life i want takes second place to the life i lead. and honestly, i just don't have the courage to jump off the train. the mist is just too thick.

so instead, i must do my best and come to terms with who i am and what i have become. i keep clutched to my chest the dregs of who i want to be, and strive to achieve those lack-luster dreams in the distant land of "some day". for now, i sit on this window ledge and contemplate the drop, look up at the sky and wish i could just float my way up to the clouds. the lights look so much prettier from up there.

i am not what you want me to be. i am not a corporate drone. yes, i am the reliable one, the one who gets things done, the rock in the flood that everyone gets to stand on, dry footed, as i sputter beneath the waves. but that is my honor and my duty, and i would not be complete without it. i could definately do without the self-doubt, however, and the mockery, the sneers, the adversity of the everyday world when faced with a plain, mousy girl who looks just like everyone else. i am who i need to be. maybe someday, i'll be who i want to be.

Comments

[bigdoggie.livejournal.com]

I guess i did the right think when I chose to want to be the person I need to be.
Am I the only person satisfied with myself?

[cymry.livejournal.com]

probably. self-satisfaction is in depressingly short supply, especially around xmas.

[fordcov.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I'm pretty pleased with myself these days. but then I seem to have just recently made the same choice as Red...

Fate tends to it's own.

[thugfish.livejournal.com]

I will misquote this, but I will mark it down nonetheless:
"Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I don't see you as that 'mousy girl who looks just like everyone else'. But that's just me.
As for those two, well, if they are who they want to be, my question is, "Who do you want to be?"

[superhobbit.livejournal.com]

So you don't know me at all, as I just stumbled across you on a more or less random jaunt of my own. But what you write above? Is a rather better face placed upon what I have been doing the last...I don't want to think how many years.
And the brain suddenly deactivates. Hello! Good luck! What do (did) you write?
(I'm Josh, by the by.)

[cymry.livejournal.com]

well hello, and hurrah for the random button! i'm cymry (which i'm sure you can tell by the info page on LJ *lol*) and i'm not always that depressed/cynical. it's been a strange year.

as for writing, i usually write fantasy, with a medieval flair to it. i'm not particularly good, but nor am i (in my own exceedingly humble opinion) particularly bad. i'll likely start writing again as soon as classes start again, but that remains to be seen. writer's block sucks... and you?

[superhobbit.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree absolutely. Writer's block does suck. With all the force of every black hole that ever was and ever will be.
And I'll second that motion for a strange year, too.
But I am, or I want to be, a writer of science fiction. I have a pile of mouldering rejection slips to back up this pretension, though nothing very recent. It seems that I do not have the hard science-educated background to get published in today's harsh magazine environment. Or for the less sciency mags, not enough character development. So, yeah.
But you, you've got it made; classes, I mean. Definitely a boot to the head, especially since the average professor doesn't care how badly you start the quarter, so long as you show some improvement by the end. So the block may be overcome, at least enough to get a good grade, and perhaps even leave you with something of promise for later on.
So, hmm.... If you had to, HAD TO, compare your style with some other, as yet better known, writer, who's your pick? When the Phoenix Sun-Herald writes your review, who are they going to hail as your most obvious predecessor?

[cymry.livejournal.com]

oh my. now that's a tough one. honestly, i wouldn't know who to pick. i try and take note of writing styles i enjoy and utilize bits of them, all stuffed together, plus my own little touches, to achieve the desired effect. perhaps a little Mercedes Lackey, with some C.S. Friedman, Melanie Rawn, and Freda Warrington thrown in for good measure. but i think i'm being optimistic here.

i'm also not at the "attempting to get published" stage yet. for now, i'm still content to putter away at my creations in my own home, without the benefit of classes or real feedback. a few friends and i formed a writing group last year, but it just fell apart due to time constraints. i'm hoping to get it up and running again this summer though, since i managed to get some really good writing done.

as for Sci-Fi, i haven't read all that much of it. who would you compare yourself to, and what kind of Sci-Fi do you write?

[superhobbit.livejournal.com]

I am a very bad writer, in that I have this tendency to write like whoever was the last good writer I read. Sometimes I hit an Austen streak, sometimes Wild Bill. Sometimes Pratchett or Adams, but that only lasts a page before I get frustrated with my total lack of ability in the vein of funny. I usually find myself taking after an obscure British author hight M. John Harrison, but without his sense of otherness.
Maybe that's my problem: I haven't immersed myself in the process enough to develop my own style. Hmmm...