SWOT-VAC ramblings (they say it’s good, for closure)

16Nov08

There are many blogs I admire.

I cannot help it. I’m a writer. I fall easily for the written word. And yes, although I’m more comfortable writing in English (not my mother tongue, but easily my first), I find myself wishing more often nowadays that I were more flexible. My Bahasa sounds awkward, and I admit, I am not a proficient in either language. Whichever of the only two tongues I choose to converse with, I end up making some cross-lingual faux pas.  Yet I’m one of those puritan writers, pedantic and monolingual to boot, and for the sake of realism and for plain honesty’s sake, I have to force myself to stop translating everything and just write the way I speak – interjected by words of another language when my limited vocabulary fails me.

I like those who write comfortably about anything and everything. I would like to be a blogging snob, and I certainly started out that way. But I’m not. If the person expresses themselves comfortably and in a style I admire (oh yes, I frequently experience blog-envy), and most importantly, if the person inspires me, then my nose starts going green and I turn a little haughty. No, it’s frivolous. It’s rubbish. Why would they want to write about that anyway? Little attention-seeking wretches.

But really. Blogs are all about attention and gathering enough so you can bask in it. I wonder what happened to journals? Moleskin-wannabes are making a comeback, I noticed, but only for the truly anal. For the rest of us who prefer a little chaos in our lives, we usually live without them, pretty and exclusive though they look.

I admire those who write in a spur of the moment. I’m a true adherent to the Chaos Theory, and there’s nothing I admire more than someone who writes because they want to and because they can. At the risk of sounding all new-age and trendy, I believe in words just coming to you and struggling to pour out of your fingers and into your blank page, or your word processor.

So your writing tends to sound emotional and wimpy, rather than professional and clean. Who cares?

Although I’ve found that the best writers aren’t complete daisies either. They get pretty organized about their work. They set timetables. It’s work, not just some dream – you’ll get it if you do, tough if you don’t. If you’re serious about anything, then effort and time has to be put into it. And nobody makes it seem less like a job than you. The fun factor is something that requires work as well. And loving what you do usually makes fun in one’s work come a lot easier.

Oh, sure, I sound repetitious. Nothing I’m saying here is anything you haven’t read somewhere before. But I guess I’m just reminding myself of all the things I should already know and do for myself. Writing is spontaneous for me, usually. I type out the words and then they reorganize themselves in my mind. One of the side-effects of being a writer in the post-modern age, I suppose – your mind only really works like a word processor. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.

Or maybe I’m procrastinating from my Proteomics exam which is very, very soon.

Back to work.

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