Oh poor neglected blog. I haven't looked at you in over a year. It seems any time I have even a mere moment to myself I decide "OH! Now I have time to write!" The trouble with me is that I almost always seem to have writers block. A dear friend of mine suggested that returning to blogging might help. Sure, it's not the short stories and fiction that I would ultimately like to write but at least I'm stretching those writing muscles...right?
The other problem with writing an entry that is not fiction is that I constantly think to myself, "why even bother? No one wants to hear about how you had your blackheads worked on. Don't be stupid." Yeah, I talked to myself like that but who isn't at least slightly mean to themselves? The truth is that it doesn't matter than no one would care about what you write on that blank page. Sometimes you just have to sit down and write. My hopes is that one day I can recapture the creativity I had roughly a decade ago. I find that it was a lot easier to write when I thought I was miserable. That was just silly teenage angst, there was actually nothing really wrong with my life. Those problems seem so minuscule now. Now that I'm happier in my day to day life I find it difficult to write the stories I want to write. Oh, I don't really like writing happy stories. The whole "and then they lived happily ever after" doesn't really float my boat. I love stories that are sort of beautiful depressing.
Wally Lamb does this really nicely. His stories seem to just be about people living their lives, and those people seem to have pretty normal lives. Pretty normal and pretty depressing. People who fall out of love. People who have obligations to family. People who don't like the way they look. There's always something else brewing underneath and his stories have a deeper meaning but I like that even on the surface you might think they're just about people living their lives.
The first book I read by Wally Lamb was 'She's Come Undone'. I devoured it, finished it two sittings. It was recommended by my old manager at this adorable cupcake bakery I worked. It was my first real job out of pastry school, I thought my chef from school might have a heart attack if he new I was making cupcakes for a living. He's was old school and from France, the cupcake trend annoyed him slightly but the bakery was fun to work at and my coworkers were sweet. I still check out my former boss' facebook from time to time even though it has been roughly four years since I worked for her. The owner was woman who was completely down to earth despite the fact that her life seemed like something you only hear about. She was lively and it always seemed like she was ready for her next adveture, whatever that might be. The manager was one of the sweetest women you could ever hope to meet. When she recommended Lamb's novel to me she seemed a bit hesitant. After reading it I could see why. She, being made of sugar, had suggested a novel that was so beautifully depressing. On the surface just a story about a woman's life, her insecurities were things that I'm sure most people have dealt with. I have since read a few more of Lamb's novels but I think that one sticks with me more than the others.
This was nice. Forcing myself to write for a little bit. I used to think if I could give myself a topic ( nail polish, videogames, crafting) I might be able to make time for writing. Turns out working in the culinary industry leaves very little time for anything else. I am still obsessed with those topic; in fact, my nail polish collection is now well over 100 polishes so maybe I will write about that at some point but I think for now I'll just see what comes to me and hope that something of interest will come of it.
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