I’ve spent a lot of years writing. I’ve written about music, offbeat weddings and weirdo-culture, home decor and upscale appliances, fine art publishing, food and restaurants, crafting and DIY, and even web hosting. One form of writing that I’ve eschewed over the years, since my angsty and love-sick teen journaling days, has been creative writing.
I read novel after novel, check up on McSweeney’s regularly, and even dive into the New Yorker when I can. But when it comes to picking up the pen and throwing down some creative words of my own… nu uh. And now I write instructions for a living, so creativity is typically thrown out the window.
So I decided to take an informal creative writing workshop at the Austin Public Library called Badgerdog. As confident as I feel in general writerly things, writing poems and waxing creative in prose is not my forte. It has been a bit of a struggle, trying to find my voice (which I haven’t… yet). But it’s not the writing that stresses me the most… it’s the end of workshop reading.
<freakout>HORROR. I have to read my own work aloud to a bunch of people not only in my class, but also their significant others and family or friends. The sides of my face start burning and my eyes water whenever I have to get in front of a group. And to top it all off? I don’t even like what I wrote (though I suspect this is normal, and just because I’m a self-critical freak).</freakout>
I WILL survive this.. it’s totally inane. But silly fear knows no boundaries. I’ll let you know how it goes…
