about writing

I'm writing this short story, except it's not really fiction, because it all happened. I feel like the creative expression of the series of events in question is taxing enough to consider it a form of art though, and I'm rolling with it.

That said, I'm having some trouble.

I think the trouble is that I'm afraid of not doing this (mysterious) set of events justice. I very much do not want to be that girl who writes about "OMG SEVENTH GRADE WAS LIKE, SOOO DRAMATIC." I was that girl in seventh grade (I do not even want to revisit those three page manuscripts regarding the wholly desirable life of Olivia Jones. Or revisit my fascination with the name Olivia.) and I am done with it. I'd like to think I've been done with it for a while.

Anyway, sometimes I get worried that I'm too self-absorbed, and that my narrator, who is me, is boring. My narrator lives very much in her own head, because I live very much in my own head, and I lived even more within my own head when I was in seventh grade (during which time period some of the story does indeed take place). The time when I am the most inside of my head is when I'm writing, especially about times when I have previously been inside my own head.

This makes it hard to get out of my head again later.

This has become my problem also.

So my issues with writing right now are as follows:

1. I keep finding myself in this drifty non-real-world mindset where my head is the only relevant thing.
2. I am worried that my story, which I know has the potential to be good, is not currently even close to good, and people revising it won't see the potential goodness that it has because they'll be distracted by its current badness.
3. I feel vaguely uncomfortable writing about people whom I know and care about and would be loath to misrepresent, although at the same time I feel that it is necessary to shift around the details to make this story at least look like fiction.

Tonight I sat on the floor for a while, accidentally called a girl named Hannah a prostitute (which she seemed to take well, all things considered), ate mozzarella sticks although I hadn't planned on it, and discussed these kinds of things.

I think that was productive.

It's funny that I don't have this kind of angst when I blog. I'm more or less okay with the fact that most of what I type up here is drivel. I don't expect more from myself when I'm here (although sometimes if something really phenomenal happens I'll avoid writing about it, for fear of messing it up with my words and making it less cool than it was).

Love always,

Clara