Still Waters
Full Member
- Aug 1, 2024
Yesterday I dug up the first short story I ever wrote, back in 2011. I loved it at the time. It is a hybrid between real experiences from my life, and some necessary fiction to move the scenes along. I'm not sure if it constitutes creative non-fiction, but something of that nature. I wrote it in all of a week and it was as easy to write as it was cathartic for me. I loved it, because it was the first writing I'd ever finished that told my experience of life from my perspective: disconnected from reality, as it were. I felt I had done my suffering justice.
I began trying to fix it up yesterday, and again just now. My problem is that as soon as I begin to read anything I've written (especially anything creative or non-academic), I just get overwhelmed with how lousy it is and I quit, because it is so bad, I feel like the job is too enormous for me to take on, if I'm even capable of doing it. I just scrutinize my work, I hate my work and feel like there's no point... And it's very interesting to note that I recently gave up (again) on Oriental dance for the exact same reason. I just look at what I'm doing and think, I am so bad at this, and I've been doing it for years, it doesn't even seem worth doing anymore. I feel like I'm a lost cause.
There is only one creative thing I love to do that I don't have this paralyzing self-criticism with, and it is drawing shapes and designs--NOT realistic objects or scenes, no, because I can't draw. I just draw shapes and designs. It's like the only thing I can do that nobody (including myself) is breathing down my neck and yelling at me about, because I'm doing it all wrong, because I can't do it wrong, because it's not supposed to be anything. I completely follow my whims and plan nothing. Drawings like this:![800x820 Purple Daisy Pentagon PROCESSED.jpg 800x820 Purple Daisy Pentagon PROCESSED.jpg](https://colony.litopia.com/data/attachments/18/18851-c958593c59b73948211c9d97c413357e.jpg?hash=6jC31osAww)
Literally everything else I do in my life comes with crippling levels judgment, at best.
Moreover, whenever I try to plan anything, when I set out to draw a specific design or thing, it never goes to plan. I end up with something completely different than what I wanted or intended to draw. This situation bleeds into all areas of my life, including my writing. My plans never work out, so I've all but stopped making plans now.
I don't know what to do about these problems.
Does anyone have any advice? I don't know what to do... And yet, throughout the worst decades of my life, poetry and poetic thoughts just rolled out of my pen. But I needed it then. It was the only thing keeping me sane. Nowadays, these drawings flow like my poems used to...
All I can think of to do is to sit down and do some soul-searching about this...
I began trying to fix it up yesterday, and again just now. My problem is that as soon as I begin to read anything I've written (especially anything creative or non-academic), I just get overwhelmed with how lousy it is and I quit, because it is so bad, I feel like the job is too enormous for me to take on, if I'm even capable of doing it. I just scrutinize my work, I hate my work and feel like there's no point... And it's very interesting to note that I recently gave up (again) on Oriental dance for the exact same reason. I just look at what I'm doing and think, I am so bad at this, and I've been doing it for years, it doesn't even seem worth doing anymore. I feel like I'm a lost cause.
There is only one creative thing I love to do that I don't have this paralyzing self-criticism with, and it is drawing shapes and designs--NOT realistic objects or scenes, no, because I can't draw. I just draw shapes and designs. It's like the only thing I can do that nobody (including myself) is breathing down my neck and yelling at me about, because I'm doing it all wrong, because I can't do it wrong, because it's not supposed to be anything. I completely follow my whims and plan nothing. Drawings like this:
![800x820 Purple Daisy Pentagon PROCESSED.jpg 800x820 Purple Daisy Pentagon PROCESSED.jpg](https://colony.litopia.com/data/attachments/18/18851-c958593c59b73948211c9d97c413357e.jpg?hash=6jC31osAww)
Literally everything else I do in my life comes with crippling levels judgment, at best.
Moreover, whenever I try to plan anything, when I set out to draw a specific design or thing, it never goes to plan. I end up with something completely different than what I wanted or intended to draw. This situation bleeds into all areas of my life, including my writing. My plans never work out, so I've all but stopped making plans now.
I don't know what to do about these problems.
Does anyone have any advice? I don't know what to do... And yet, throughout the worst decades of my life, poetry and poetic thoughts just rolled out of my pen. But I needed it then. It was the only thing keeping me sane. Nowadays, these drawings flow like my poems used to...
All I can think of to do is to sit down and do some soul-searching about this...