I’m standing in a library, and for some reason, I felt like looking at some of my blog posts.
I was speaking to a friend today at length, and he said something that I found interesting. “Marcus,” he said. “I read through some of your blogs one day, and something struck me. Your writing made you sound like one of those stereotypical tortured writers that have this pressing inner turmoil they can’t deal with.”
“Really?” I said.
In some ways, like anyone else, I have been tortured, and in other ways I am completely fine, but I decided to investigate to see what he was talking about.
I call my form of writing “stream of consciousness”, because most of the blogs I ever write, I write them once, and never read them again. I occasionally check my blog stats and see how many people are reading, but I never really go back and read my own writing.
What I saw surprised me to no end. Some of this writing was so…. personal I wondered what I was thinking when I wrote it? I read through some of my blogs on running, my time in New York, and my most popular blog every about my “near death experience”.
It was as if I was standing by a fence, watching myself typing these blogs up in different locales. I could see myself at 4 a.m in France, blogging about the Cannes Film Festival. I could see myself cold and trembling in an old apartment, blogging about wanting to change my life. I could see myself in New York, sitting in a suit of wet clothes and blogging after a particularly bad night in the Lower East Side.
Even though these blogs are all about me, when I re-read these, I feel like a stranger reading another person’s blog. They are so descriptive, so direct, it seems as if whoever wrote this blog was writing for money, or something else. Sometimes I can’t even believe its me.
I’ve felt this way when I’ve re-read some of my writing projects from the past. I find myself sitting for an hour or so, reading through old stories i’ve written, feeling as if they were written by someone else. Maybe I am a different person when I’m writing, maybe I tap into a profundity that I am afraid to show in person, and possibly this profundity (egad, I said “profundity” twice!) comes from the source within my mind that is unfiltered, unashamed and unafraid.
It is interesting to have a powerful glimpse into specific moments of time, the memories and the motivations. A person might ask, “But you wrote this, can’t you remember how you were feeling when you wrote X blog, or Y blog?” To that I will say a firm “No.”
In the last three years, I have written over a thousand pages of work, from novels to screen plays and blogs. My average blog runs 1200 words. So far I have 108 posts. That’s 129,600 words. My first novel, which ran 250 manuscript length pages, was around 130,000 words.
The emotions that go into each book, script, or blog are unto themselves unique to that moment. I realize I may get an inspired feeling after seeing a person walk across the street in a certain way, I might be trying to describe a feeling that is sitting within me at that moment, or I just might be venting after a bad night. Either way, like most people, these memories fade within my mind as soon as I slip the ipod headphones on, start watching a movie, or focus on something else. Looking at these blogs is like looking at the glimpse of the past, at various versions of me in different times, in different clothes.
I like it.
It gives me perspective on my thoughts and helps me refocus on whatever it is that i’m trying to do in the present. If I was depressed three months ago in New York for a night because some really hot girl flaked on me, am I still like that? I can gauge. If I have a blog that talks about me trying to escape a certain kind of feeling or situation, I can ask myself, “Have I escaped that situation? Have I dealt with it?” Sometimes being able to look into the past, allows us to look at the present with an amazing clarity.
I never started this blog to record tidbits of my life. I started it to keep writing in between the heft mental weight or working on novels. I started it after I read Stephen King’s On Writing and knew that to stop writing, was to create chaos in my mind.
After almost two years of sincere blogging, I can say that it had been a good thing. Sometimes I laugh at the things i’ve written about, like angry blogs about a malfunctioning computer, or the hilarity of a night from my “Jesus Cock Block” blog, and others. Sometimes I forget that I am an individual that ends up in a lot of funny situations involving drugs, artists and millionaires. Reading through some of these reminds me of who I am, what I attract and what I do.
I’m glad my friend mentioned the blog today, or I wouldn’t have been able to take a step back and look at myself.
I have no internet at home, and I’m at the library and its cold outside. I think its time to mosey on home, hop into bed, and dream about dancing sugar plums and pieces of Jerk Chicken that sing falsetto with necklaces that read “Barack the Vote” hanging from the bones.
if I have that dream, I promise, I’ll blog about it.
Mind of Marcus 