Thursday, February 16, 2012

Can I Speak My Mind? *

I've been doing morning pages for about a year. Morning pages are a suggested activity in the book The Artist's Way. The idea is to write first thing in the morning before you're distracted. I, of course, have modified the instructions to fit what I can and will do, I use the computer instead of the suggested handwritten page. This modification has worked, the other times that I tried to consistently do morning pages, and tried to follow the instructions, I gave up.
I'm working on exercising my creativity and get some good mental habits going, and I have found that doing the morning pages has definitely led to more writing, though sporadic. I even got a cheap-O microphone for my iPod touch to record voice memos when I have an idea in my head, but not the time or inclination to type it all out.
So I feel like I'm wanting to find that next step.
I'm also really thinking about my voice, finding or re-finding, or maybe just redefining how I write. I write very differently for my private morning pages than I do for a stupid face book post or the occasional blog post on one of my regular blogs. (by regular I mean publicized and actually read by people)
Why the difference? It's good to take the time to capitalize "I" and use the spell check on something for public consumption, but how much do I censor myself?
This question came to me partly from a face book conversation my boyfriend had with a friend. The BFF (that's Boy Friend Forever) was just writing exactly what he felt. In a conversation with a friend who has very different opinions, and all of this was basically in public. And I sometimes wonder if parts of my family or old friends think about de-friending me just for 'liking' something they don't agree with.
I guess I grew up being very careful of feelings, or imagined feelings, and trying to do what was 'right', as it was taught to me. And now I'm wanting to explore actually letting myself out of my restraints.
I mean, what would happen if I actually said what was in my brain?
So I'm challenging myself to practice writing things that actually matter to me, and writing them in a pseudo-public arena. Maybe even, evening pages? I'll fix up the blog, delete a bunch of crappy old posts 'what kind of _____ are you?' and make it look nice. I may make it more public when I'm more comfortable with what I'm doing. So for now, if you've found me, congratulations!







*Remember the Christopher Reeves Superman movie? And the dumb "song" Lois Lane thinks/sings at Superman: Can You Read My Mind? We made so much fun of that part of the movie in my junior high. It was a bit of a catch phrase, granted probably for only a week, but it stuck in my head. That's what I hear when I was titling this post.

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