proteanme

The last several days I’ve thought of some great opening lines for new pieces of writing and then gotten distracted and forgotten them before I could write them down. In one instance I was falling asleep and I told myself I’d remember the line in the morning. But of course I didn’t. What’s so frustrating is that I always carry around in my pockets a pen and a small notebook. Plus, I keep paper and pen by my bed. I am my own worst enemy

For me a good first line is like a hook in a tune. It’s the way into whatever “story” I’m trying to tell. Even if it the line gets moved around and it does’t end up being the first line, it feels crucial to making the writing compelling or at least interesting or at least worth writing. Hopefully worth reading.

I’ve been reflecting back on how this hasn’t been a very prolific year for me with regard to blogging, something I find kind of disappointing because part of the reason why I haven’t posted is I waste so much time online reading taste and trend blogs like hypebeast and uncrate or looking at Facebook photos of friends of friends. It’s like I’ve replaced my junior high penchant for watching TV with being online. Ugh. But the other issue is I’ve run into so many things this year that I don’t want to blog about or don’t know how to blog about. For instance I’ve spent a lot of time this year thinking about aging and gender and relationships and I don’t want to explore any of it publicly. And then there’s the state of the world, which has seemed so extremely shitty and exhausting this year and has left me speechless. I don’t know how to find the write word to talk about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan or the famine in Africa or the Norweigan massacre or the uprisings in Egypt or Syria or any individual country involved in the Arab or the debt ceiling crisis or the killing of Osama Bin Laden or the tornadoes in the Midwest or Hurricane Irene or the collapse or the Euro. The whole world seems to be in upheaval in 2011.