When I write, I need to create really specific analogies. Analogies no one has thought of before, ones that teeter the line between artistic and nonsensical. I convince myself if I say what I have to say outright, it’s not worth being heard. It’s simply a first draft—like a green caterpillar yet to transform into a stunningly complex butterfly.
I’m not sure when or where this idea was planted in my brain. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the shadow of my older brother, who spent his first year of high school being compared to Truman Capote. Or perhaps it’s because I’m a perfectionist. I don’t know.
I find myself sitting in front of my keyboard, typing sentences I don’t like and deleting them after failing to fall in love with them. Sometimes the way I write makes me feel like an old man sitting at a typewriter in a cabin in the middle of the woods instead of a teenage girl sitting on her pink comforter listening to her favorite music. I conclude that I don’t want my writing to read like Truman Capote; I want my writing to read like Emma Bowen.
Finding my voice has always been difficult for me, whether you consider that statement literally or figuratively. Writing in my own voice often leads to long, drawn-out sentences that lose the reader halfway through. Confession: I usually don’t know what I want to say until the words magically appear on the screen, and suddenly my idea has been said.
I don’t know how to describe my voice either. Is it the wordiness that characterizes a piece as my own? Or the conversational tone and questionable sentence structure? How do you describe what makes your expression uniquely yours?
When it comes to my blog, I have ideas bursting out of my mind begging me to be translated into a post. Small things like what type of media I’ve been consuming recently and deeper introspective topics all sit in my Google Drive folder on deck. There is no straw to pull to see what gets written first; I write when the ideas come to me.
So, when I have no ideas coming to me, I end up with partially started drafts and zero new blog posts.
Writer’s block and I are longtime frenemies. The ex that keeps coming back, the invincible stain on your favorite shirt, or the blackhead that pops up on the same spot on your chin every few weeks. It creeps up on me like those embarrassing memories that make you cringe in bed in the middle of the night. It’s suffocating, unavoidable, and all-consuming.
I often have spurts where I can sit down and write a fully fleshed-out piece in one go. Just as often, I sit in front of my screen for hours with a measly new sentence or two of progress. As an individual whose brain moves faster than her mouth or fingers, it’s depressing to be unable to transcribe those thoughts to a document.
This duality singlehandedly fuels the love-hate relationship I sustain with writing. At my core, I love writing. I love my complicated analogies and turning small things like bleaching my hair or getting my wisdom teeth out (stay tuned) into long-winded reflective pieces. I love prompted poetry, sharing work I’m proud of, and finding ways to use my favorite words in sentences they probably don’t belong in. I love run-on sentences and pushing the boundaries of grammar by claiming it as my voice or my style.
As for my hate, that’s reserved for when I can’t experience everything I love about writing to the fullest extent. So when I say “love-hate,” in reality, there is no hate. The inability to satisfy my urge to write flourishing prose in a strictly academic research paper is what drives a wedge between me and my creative conscience.
I have been told I’m a good writer since elementary school. However, I find it hard to believe. In the same way I convinced myself I was tone-deaf in high school (which I stand by), I consider myself an average, run-of-the-mill writer whom no one has told to step on the brakes. I digress—this is not a criticism of my skills or a debrief on my self-perception.
I have to fight my brain to tell myself my thoughts are worth writing and that those words are worth reading. I have fallen victim to the ideology that bigger is better, finding myself in a pit of vocabulary that looks like pieces to the wrong puzzle. Ultimately, I surprised myself by starting this blog: I had no regard for my fears and insecurities and spontaneously put my writing in the world’s hands, which is very out of character.
With this post, my blog, and everything else I will pump into the world one day, I take ownership of a voice that is undoubtedly mine, words that may not belong in their sentences, and metaphors three times as complicated as the original subject matter.
And one day, maybe a freshman in their high school English class will be told they write like Emma Bowen. In that case, I hope they go home to tell their parents with a big smile on their face. Or maybe they won’t know who I am, and that’s okay too.
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