A reader of Shimelle Lane's blog brought me inspiration for this post. In it, Shimelle shared her writing process using a series of questions. I was pretty intrigued as I had never looked at my own writings that way. To me, my writings were just that, ramblings on my thoughts, feelings and opinions. It was a way to distress and to indulge at the same time :) So I decided to try this out...
Qn: What writing are you working on?
Hmmm, now that's a pretty awkward question for me. Not awkward as in hard to answer but awkward as in a weird question. Perhaps it is the choice of words here. Somehow I had never gotten round to equating writing with work. In fact, as mentioned, it was a form of indulgence for me, a de-stressor. So anyhow, here goes....
My writing had always been things that happened around me, the feelings that it induced, my opinions on what happened and of course how it all developed. I write about things that mattered to me, things that evoke feelings and emotions in me. It will be hard, VERY hard for me to write about things that didn't matter, has no emotional effect on me, it will tell. My writing will definitely come out feeling forced and unnatural and in the process of writing, there will be hardly any de-stressing, in fact quite the opposite effect as I will fuss over the words used. Simply put, the words doesn't trip over themselves falling out (meaning my fingers can't keep up with my thoughts) and it will sound forced.
I ramble, yes I know I do. (you definitely have to acknowledge that when your 10 year old tells you that your daily journal looks more like a history book in the making, so yes, I ramble). I also know that I like to do so. It relaxes me, gives me an outlet for my emotions and stress. Yet funnily, the language that I most love rambling on is Mandarin. Especially so for feeling or emotions, I just find that this language evoke the kind of feel I want, is able to express accurately on what I experienced and hits it on the nail for me every time.
Qn: How does your work differs from others of the same genres?
Hmmm... well...... actually I don't know. I write and I write. That's it. I don't compare myself with the blogs that I read. I write and read for enjoyment, not for examination. I don't analyze, I don't dissect and I don't compare. In a sense, you write yours and I write mine and we enjoy each other's ramblings. And erm, what genre? Life in general? Ramblings? I don't think there is actually a genre for what I write about other than its my life in general. I don't just write a crafting blog, I write on what happens, how I feel and how it affects me.
Qn: Why do you write what you do?
Erm, another awkward question. I ramble on things that are real to me. They affect me, leave marks on me. They pull on my heartstrings or they make my anger flare. They make me go "OMG!" or they make my tears fall. They sometimes stop me in my tracks and give me a moment of clarity. Or they sometimes envelopes me in hazy conditions as bad as last year's haze that I find myself coughing and choking on the engulfing feelings, not seeing the whole forest but just one tree. I write because there is no pretense, my words present how I feel.
Qn: How does your writing process work?
Writing process? What writing process? To disappoint, I just dont have one. Yes, I schedule my posts. Yes, I have an idea or a topic that I want to write on. But hell no, I do not have a process for writing! I er, just W.R,I.T.E. No, I don't brainstorm about it. I don't research on it unless it blog links that I want to include and I don't call that "research" more like checking it up, clicking copy & paste. I simply let the words flow because that is then real.
Reading Shimelle's version again, I realized that my take on the same questions were entirely different. I realized that the background, experiences and emotions of a person affects how he reads and answers a question that may be exactly the same in words but entirely different in the aspect that it was finally answered. Talk about fairness in surveys blah blah blah, guess that is probably why large scaled surveys are that hard AND expensive to run!
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