Internetz, I'm about to share a secret. Only a handful of people have heard it so far and that's mostly when I'm tipsy. Please, nobody tell my parents.
I finally decided (discovered? It feels like that time I walked into a pole and hurt my nose) what I want to do when I grow up: I want to be Leo Tolstoy. I did not actively reach out for this information. It came to me in a moment of absolute delirium/despair when I was writing an essay last semester. That was an earth-shattering moment, for reasons beyond this one.
What I'm really saying is that I've decided to reclaim my childhood dream of being a writer. It's one which reality tugged away from me in late primary school, because a) I couldn't see it fitting into my life with the kind of straight-laced engineer/doctor/IT family I have and b) I realised eventually that I never really liked to write, just wanted to be a writer. I wanted to sit at the window gazing absently at monsoon-swept streets (I had this weird romantic concept of monsoons back in the day) thinking heart-breaking, poetic thoughts. There would be a hot chocolate on the sill (I drank a lot of hot chocolate back in the day) and a cheap, chipped pen twirling nonchalantly at my fingertips. But... I actually hated writing so even in my pipe dreams that pen never touched paper.
Et alors, Tolstoy is the best.
So here's the thing: I have not much experience with anything but essays (which either do really well or not at all), strongly doubt my abilities in fiction, don't have a flowing beard, and uhh, I don't have the time/space. Creative work needs time and space but my parents will push me to get a job after this, then some day a husband... everything will go down the toilet after that. I've tossed up the idea of being a vile gold-digger but writers are meant to be tortured souls grovelling in crummy public houses, so that won't work at all. I want to do a writing course next year but: I'll feel guilty about doing something so... woolly while bludging off parents, + ffs what kind of real writer does a writing course? That's just silly.
Here's the positive: I do like writing now, and I am a fairly eccentric person.
I finally decided (discovered? It feels like that time I walked into a pole and hurt my nose) what I want to do when I grow up: I want to be Leo Tolstoy. I did not actively reach out for this information. It came to me in a moment of absolute delirium/despair when I was writing an essay last semester. That was an earth-shattering moment, for reasons beyond this one.
What I'm really saying is that I've decided to reclaim my childhood dream of being a writer. It's one which reality tugged away from me in late primary school, because a) I couldn't see it fitting into my life with the kind of straight-laced engineer/doctor/IT family I have and b) I realised eventually that I never really liked to write, just wanted to be a writer. I wanted to sit at the window gazing absently at monsoon-swept streets (I had this weird romantic concept of monsoons back in the day) thinking heart-breaking, poetic thoughts. There would be a hot chocolate on the sill (I drank a lot of hot chocolate back in the day) and a cheap, chipped pen twirling nonchalantly at my fingertips. But... I actually hated writing so even in my pipe dreams that pen never touched paper.
Et alors, Tolstoy is the best.
So here's the thing: I have not much experience with anything but essays (which either do really well or not at all), strongly doubt my abilities in fiction, don't have a flowing beard, and uhh, I don't have the time/space. Creative work needs time and space but my parents will push me to get a job after this, then some day a husband... everything will go down the toilet after that. I've tossed up the idea of being a vile gold-digger but writers are meant to be tortured souls grovelling in crummy public houses, so that won't work at all. I want to do a writing course next year but: I'll feel guilty about doing something so... woolly while bludging off parents, + ffs what kind of real writer does a writing course? That's just silly.
Here's the positive: I do like writing now, and I am a fairly eccentric person.
