Readable Writing

I’ve always been a writer.

I’ve always had a billion thoughts running through my head all the time. But I’ve never been much of a talker, people remind me of that all the time- from my Kindergarten teacher who says I’m the quietest kid she could remember, to people out at shows that say I haven’t said a word all night. I’m a thinker. I live inside my head (which will be a whole other blog, coming soon..) I can’t always figure out how to get my thoughts out from my mind in a way that makes sense when spoken to other people, but I could sit and write them down in notebook after notebook. Forever.

The reasons I write? Clear my head. Try to make sense of the things I think. To leave my thoughts behind as a trail of my life. My written words are what I feel show my personality the best. What I really think, feel, and believe.. how I deal with things.. the way I try to figure out life.. or just what I spend the days of my life doing. I’m constantly writing. Every day. I keep notebooks everywhere. And sometimes when it looks like I’m texting on my phone, I’m actually just typing thoughts to myself.

The reason I started a blog, aside from a bunch of folks constantly telling me I should, was to share some of the things I’ve written with people. But the reason I keep finding it hard to actually post things in this blog is that I’m scared what I write isn’t going to be readable. And readable, to me, is that you enjoy what you read. You are interested in it, you understand it- whether you agree with it or not. And that you feel some kind of emotion, or just a slight change in how you see something in the world after you’ve thought about it the way I do.

I recently found a book from 1949 that I’m starting to scan through- called “The Art of Readable Writing”. It jumped out to me right away, as I’m going through this, well, not so much of a writer’s-block as it is a.. poster’s-block. :P It’s been an interesting book so far, talking about adapting how we write from Aristotle, the importance of being trivial, degrees and results of plain talk, unpredictable words and readers.. and so on. All of those being chapters from the book by the way- yeah, it’s very “1949”..

Lately as I write what happens, what I feel, things I think as I ponder life- my thoughts have been so deep and personal that sometimes I can barely understand them myself. So I don’t want to share that stuff with anyone. Of course, I’m always gonna have thoughts that I might turn into words on paper, but won’t ever intend on anyone else ever reading. You ever find papers of things that you’ve written when you were younger? Desperate scribbles from a mindset you no longer have, and you think now, as you’ve moved on from that angst-filled frame of mind that seems silly to you now, how happy you are that NOBODY has ever seen those words? Ha, I definitely have, and I want to make sure that the things I write now aren’t going to be in the future as embarrassing as some things I’ve written in the past.

But my plan as I started this thing was to not think so much about what I’ve written, and just post things. I keep my completely private thoughts in their own place, and then I can collect from wherever else my words find themselves and then put them out there for you to read. However in the last few weeks as I lay out blogs, I re-read them and decide they are better left unsaid to the world. Either from being too complex, too confusing, too uninteresting, or just maybe too personal for public knowledge right now.

But as far as the stuff I DO decide to share with people- what am I going to leave for that? Do I want the only things I post to be shallow thoughts on an easy-minded blog? What kind of writer would I be then? Do I want to publicly write the same safe, common thoughts that we ALL have and can relate to? Words that leave nothing in your mind, won’t challenge you, or don’t stretch your own thoughts?
…
Of course not. I want to be a writer of emotion and substance, but above all, I just want to write what’s true in my mind, and my heart, and my life. Something tells me that if I stick with that, you’ll be satisfied enough with each blog of mine that you read.

So stay tuned.

~emjae.

P.S. and from now on, my blogs are gonna have some of my photos in them as well. Because aside from my written words, my pictures are my life. ;)