A new old direction

Isn't it funny how the things we swear we'll never, ever do often end up being the things we mysteriously find ourselves drawn into after all? It has to be one of those things God does to have a laugh. Sort of like the old adage about if you want to make Him laugh, tell Him your plans, or something like that. I don't know if God is really like that, but if I were Him, it would certainly be tempting to mess with my creation when they start getting all self-important and dictating their own terms on life.

Anyway, that whole gotcha business: I've been getting a lot of that lately. When I was in high school, I had people saying that I should be a teacher - parents, extended family, teachers, those highly-invested types. Nothing could have freaked me out more; I vehemently declared over and over that teaching would be a terrible fit for me. Besides, had they seen my GPA? Good teachers don't come from terrible students... right?

So, that was that. Somewhere along the lines, however, destiny has a way of catching up with you. This year, I'll be a junior in college, starting down the path to become a full-fledged English teacher. What's weirder is that I'm not even being dragged into it kicking and screaming - I'm actually looking forward to it. I want to be a teacher, and I think I could maybe even be a good one. This is a complete shift in perspective for me, as you may imagine. More on that later. Example number one.

The second is very similar in its upside-your-headedness. I want to be a writer. This desire is as recent and foreign as it is old and familiar. Like stoking the still-smoldering coals of last night's fire the next morning, I've come back around to rediscover a part of me I had once dismissed as worthless. My rationale was that since language has always come rather easily to me, I would rather seek out other things that I could do that would be more gratifying, since I would have worked to get them.

Two books have been super helpful while I've been finding my way back to writing. The first is Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, which has opened me up immensely to simply being comfortable in my abilities as a writer. I like Anne Lamott anyway from reading her other work, particularly her thoughts on faith, so I guess that I wasn't all that surprised. She's refreshingly candid and humble, making it easy to like her from the start. Plus, I was feeling completely overwhelmed, with no idea where to start, and she demystified the process for me. Rather than go through the mechanics of writing, she deals more with getting started, or more specifically the mental stuff that gets in the way of doing so (something I'm struggling with right now!), such as the voice in your head that tells you that you're no good (she calls it Radio KFKD... guess what the call letters stand for) and overcoming jealousy for others' success. She exposes writing as being far more elemental than we often make it out to be - "good writing is about telling the truth," she says, and I believe her. That's always my aim - to tell the truth. Also, she comes up with some of the most spot-on similes and metaphors; if you're looking to describe something using something else, she's got it down.

The second book is On Writing: A Memoir of The Craft, by Stephen King. Keep in mind I'd never read any of King's work before, but this book had come highly recommended by my writer friend Addie, so I figured I'd check it out. To my surprise, he's actually really funny and engaging as a writer. I just knew him as a horror writer before, but he comes across as a very normal guy. His golden rule to prospective writers is this: read a lot, write a lot. Nothing too deep, but I would agree wholeheartedly. The more you read, the better of a writer and editor you can become. I never went to any great lengths to work on writing skills when I was in high school, but it came easily because of the massive amount that I read as a kid. The writing a lot thing is where I tend to struggle. Here's a funny example of this that King includes in the book:

A friend reportedly once asked James Joyce how his work was going. “I got seven words today,” Joyce replied.

“But James, that’s good … at least for you,” said the friend.
“Perhaps … but I don’t know what order they go in!” he cried in despair.

I'm definitely guilty of doing a lot of self-editing before actually getting all my thoughts out. Again, this is where I've been encouraged by these couple books. "Don't worry about doing it well... just start getting it down," says Anne Lamott. For a perfectionist like me, that goes against everything I stand for. Even putting this stuff out here is a daunting task. I know that eventually this will mean something and tie together, but for right now I just have to get it done. Thankfully, I know that countless others have started down the road at the same place that I am right now. What sort of a writer will I be? I have so many varied interests it's almost impossible to tie something together. Something with music? Spirituality? Food? Who knows... I'm looking forward to finding out.

God's got a way sometimes. Like teaching and writing for me, there are things in each of our lives that have been put there for a reason. No matter how far we walk away from something that He's planted, they lie in the deepest part of our hearts. Sometimes the trial and separation is needed in order to see how important these parts of us truly are.