Throughout high school and into college, my writing would go in cycles between creative prose, song writing, and poetry. Over the past few years, however, I've been doing almost exclusively song writing, with a lot of academic and journalistic writing but little else of a creative variety. After I finished writing a novel the summer after Freshman year, I kind of lost my appetite for prose, and it seems as though after my depression sophomore year - which produced a lot of bad, sleep deprived, drugged up poetry - all of my poetic voice turned to song.
This isn't a totally bad thing, except for the fact that I could actually have a chance at getting my poetry or creative prose published at some point. Not saying anything big would happen, but in small journals, online, etc. I love writing songs, but the problem is that I'm the only one who ever really hears them. That's good in some ways, but part of the joy of writing is also sharing one's craft.
I have an idea for a new novel, one which I think would be really interesting to develop. But what with classes, blog posting, a thesis due, teaching exams to study for, and a 40+ hour a week job, it's really hard to find time to sit down and write a book. My first novel was so easy to write - the words just flowed onto the pages each night, as I had already arranged them in my mind throughout the day - but even so, just the process of typing out and editing that much text is a huge undertaking.
Then again, why not start? What's the worst that could happen? Say I get three chapters done and it goes nowhere. Would four or five songs that no one will listen to be any better? It's great to do something quick and easy, and have a finished product, but it's never really finished until it's out of your hands and into someone else's consciousness. My songs never really give me a sense of completion anyway. Might as well take a leap, try something new, see what happens. I don't know why I chose to write this here, except maybe as motivation to get my ass in gear. We'll see if I actually follow through.
