"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing": Do I feel that I have achieved either of these? And if not, will I?

I could have selected an easier question to answer to my last blog post but no, I thought I'd throw myself in the deep end and be a little more existential.

Every writer at some point or another, has questioned not only their capability, but whether they have or will ever write anything of value. I know that I definitely do. I'd be lying through my teeth if I said I never doubted myself and still do. And honestly? I definitely don't think I've written anything worth writing. Or reading. I think for writers its generally quite relative as to whether we've written something that is just totally (to quote some) "AH-MA-ZING" (with an additional 'omg'). I don't know whether I have and personally, I don't think that's a bad thing because most writers are quite under confident about their abilities.

Well, I'm guessing so.

I hope so.

Because, you know, its debilitating. If you hear another writer say 'well, I've got a book published and I've had a good reaction' - I feel like crap. I just say 'uh, no' and wrap myself up in bed for a few days and enjoy the comfort of cigarettes and tea. Its great. But I'm not writing.

So to conclude from a muddled post, I haven't written anything worth writing. And is that bad? No! Definitely not! (I hope so). If it is, then, well, I'm either doing  a lack lustre job or I'm okay. I'm sure Emily Dickinson wasn't worrying about her audience and sometimes I cross my fingers that half the world won't read whatever silliness I have to speak.

A Story Is Your Letter To The World: Discuss

"It's a bit like sitting on a island, writing SOS-messages, putting them in bottles and eventually throwing them into the sea ... - some of them are caught by the tide and, after a while, get washed back on the beach, while others seem to disappear forever." - Anna Varney of Sopor Aeternus discussing releasing her music.

When Anna Varney finishes an album of music she releases it as she describes above; chucking it out there and ignoring any feedback, all the while trying to relieve herself of negativity. Most writers, however, just simply want to tell a story. We've had ideas constrict our sanity, prompts that have made us scream with joy and a passage that took a few glasses of wine and far too many cigarettes to finish. We complete it, leave it, go over it again and maybe leave it a bit longer. Some, for a while, others; forever.

If a story is a letter to the world then Barthes' The Death Of The Author is spot on. We shouldn't consider the biography of the author because the message is within the text (or series of text's) that we have been presented with. We don't need to consider the Author's life to discover new meaning and its likely it could dilute our ideas and enjoyment of the tale. For example, if you knew that Lewis Carroll was allegedly a drug-addict and a paedophile, would it corrupt your reading of Alice In Wonderland? If so, then whoops.

So what do I do then? Do I have an audience in mind? Do I write to myself or Do I write for myself? Since I've began writing this I have far too many questions that are festering in my head. I guess I write for myself most importantly. I exorcise my thoughts and feelings and once they have been contained within something they become like a coffin in a catacomb. They are memorials, tributes to what I was feeling at the time. What I wanted to say and how.

So who am I writing to at the moment? You, I presume (Ha! You will probably be able to hear this in my voice). But who in the world am I writing to? God knows. Ask him.

Is It Necessary For A Writer To Write About The Social Or Political Events Of Their Time?

As writers we can write without limitations, whether we know it or not. As long as we can find some way to dictate our thoughts then are we are met with no impediments or barriers to censor our work. We are free to say anything we want, whether it offends or pleases our readers but the question of whether we should implement the social and political ideology in to our work is a difficult question to answer.

According to Neil McCaw, New Historicism suggests that "a literary text should not be studied in isolation..." and that it should be "placed specifically within it's own historical context and viewed as a particular product of its era, location and circumstances." I think that regardless of whether we do that as readers, writers unconsciously include ideologies and remnants of their life at the time within their work. For example, Emily Dickinson lived in isolation for a period of time and the decision for her work to remain private suggests more then introversion. The rumours of her feelings towards her sister-in-law and her position as a forward thinking woman in the 19th century suggest that, on some level, she felt the world wasn't ready for her. Thus we gain a deeper understanding of her work through her biography, and also the social and political conventions that were the norm at the time. Knowing this affects our reading of the text.

I think the question of whether it is necessary for us to write about the social/political conventions is irrelevant; Unconsciously, we include them within our work. It is the reader who ultimately decides whether our work is reflective of the time we lived in and what impact it has had on our writing.

Blurred.

I walked out of class feeling drained. I find it difficult to explain what I mean, but I felt woozy and clouded and, I guess, slightly out of touch with reality. I plugged my headphones in as soon as I left and cranked my music up so I could get my head back. I took a few drags of my cigarette and from what I can remember; everything that once lingered began to disappear behind a wall of sound.

I turned up in my room. The curtain was drawn and shadows from the street darted across the walls. I peeled off a few layers of clothing, slowly sank into my bed and watched the hypnotic figures dance me to sleep. In my dreams there were things rushing about a desolate landscape, the sky tumbling down in the background like some apocalyptic bomb. Visceral screams shook the world around me as I clutched my head. My fingers felt as if they were soaking in warm water. I was half right.

A cloudy, transparent liquid fell to my hands and within it, swirling and coiling about, were people. And these people fused with images and disappeared, joyously mixing and uniting, absent from the horrors that had unfolded around them.

I looked up and a man had reached out his hand. I don’t know how but I knew he held promises of new shores. I reached out. When I touched his hand, we became one.

What strange scenarios we imagine when we sleep.

Where are you from? What have you read?

"I feel at home whenever 

the unknown surrounds me, 

I receive its embrace 

aboard my floating house" -- Björk - Wanderlust (Volta, 2007) 

Being asked 'Where are you from?' can, from me, provide a plethora of different responses. I was born in Salisbury, I grew up in Wiltshire and I live in Northern Ireland. And now I'm studying in Winchester.
"So your English, you're from England?" is a common response. I guess I am. Well, British. Maybe. I'm not so sure. There are many places that I am from that trying to say one or the other leaves somebody unhappy with my reply. But since I moved around England a lot, I guess that is where I am from.

The one thing that has managed to remain consistent throughout the sporadic moves is my reading. I've read lots. I've failed to read, maybe a few books (I vaguely remember as a child trying to read 'Mrs. Dalloway' by Virginia Woolf. What a failure). Looking across at my bookshelf there is Lovecraft, King, Plath, Hans Christian Anderson, Carter... But I think my answer to the question is 'good books'. Actually, scratch that, 'books I enjoyed'. I don't think I can ever really pigeon hole myself into only reading books from a particular genre, time period etc. without feeling too familiar.

When we become familiar with things we become comfortable and when we become comfortable, we can often become lazy. So even though I have favourites I usually read multiple books at a time. Its just like phoning a friend back and continuing a conversation from earlier; it keeps the furnace in my mind blazing, no matter what the fuel.

The constant change of environment in my childhood and the multiple narratives I was often engrossed in have had a massive impact on my writing life. Unlike Emily Dickinson who confined herself to her house and let her writing take influence from her introversion ("What she saw from her window, what she read in her books, were her only external stimuli." - Amy Lowell), I want my work to embody the journey that my life has taken me on; the impulsive wanderlust that keeps my heart beating and my pen on the page.

How Is It That I Became A Writer?

The question of how I became a writer can probably be answered rather succinctly; since I can remember I've always been stashing my thoughts away in notebooks, tracing words in the air with my finger or feeling plagued by fictional characters in my head that feel as if they are furiously struggling to be free. But I guess the turning point was when, like Margaret Atwood, my work began to take on a personal significance that I wanted to share with the world.

In our first class of the year for Author Study, we were asked to consider how we became writers and also to write a timeline of important events that had happened to us. As I rifled through them, some of them including 'being diagnosed with depression' and 'getting suspended from primary/secondary school', I realised that these events had affected the way I write. When my moods were at an all time low it was mirrored in my writing and when I left school it started to become more visceral and experimental. Only I can write about these from my own point of view with authority, but they have shaped my perceptions and voice in my work. Like a carpenter shaving a block of wood, I guess I want to carve something too.

I want to leave this post with a quote by artist Banksy because if they have taught me anything, its that in writing I'll somehow always be remembered and with those words, there's a sense of comfort that I won't be forgotten.

“But maybe all art is about just trying to live on for a bit. I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”