Recently, I have been cleaning around the house and so I’ve been reading some of my old notebooks and journals. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes embarrassing, sometimes quite insightful. I especially love some of my opinions on writing and art. Here are a few excerpts.

June 11, 1996: …My stories Always come out confusing don’t they. Well at least I wrote it with my imagination and it a good story…

Yeah, I sound brainwashed. I should note that that was written on my 9th birthday. Here’s another:

January 31, 2000: …Writing’s a lovely subject. Writing is hard. When you finally think the story is going well, you just sort of lose it. Is this how all authors felt when they were 12? Is this how they feel now? Argh. I say that a lot nowadays. I can’t help it…

I should mention that the longest continuous work I’ve ever written I penned when I was 10-11 years old. This is a fact that depresses me often, but I hope to change it this year. It is one of my resolutions for 2011, in fact: to finally finish a full-length novel, or at least get past the 20,000 word mark in a single story. Fast forward a few years to age 15:

May 25, 2003: I’ve been writing a lot less in the past few weeks. It feels weird for me to not write (yes, I’m aware that I’m splitting infinitives, but it sounds better that way, so there.) Here’s the deal. I love to write. it is one of my favorite things to do, third only to visual art and dance. But now I can’t stand reading any of it. All I see are the flaws, and lately they’re everywhere. Time ceases to exist when I’m drawing or designing. I can be working on something for hours without even realizing it. I never felt that way about writing. […] I always told myself writing was the only way I could be another person while still being me… I’m determined to go back to writing and to how it used to make feel–that I could do anything. This summer I’m going to write my heart out. If it wasn’t meant to be then it wasn’t. But I’m not going to go down without a fight. I love life too much and I want to write too badly to see it end like this…

First of all, I should mention that I was disgustingly emo in high school and everything I wrote was dripping with teenage angst. I assure you that I was never suicidal, even if those last few sentences sound highly suspicious. But as I said, I loved life too much to ever think about dying. In fact, I have always been afraid of death. I had a strong reaction, reading this entry just now (It was titled “get it together”) but I will save my thoughts for the next entry because they could get quite long.