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I've discovered that endeavoring to write something meaningful and worthwhile every day can be quite a challenge, as those of you who read this every day may have noticed. This has led to a few late-night posts of random thoughts that have struck me as I carry on throughout the evening. It seems that when I sit and try to come up with something to blog about, I am struck by the same affliction that I get when I try to plan out how my stories will go. If I try to plan, to create character pages, then I get lost in thinking about it.

For me, writing of any kind needs to be free. I can always tell when I go back through my written work, be it creative or school related, what was written with intent, and what was written freely. While my free-writing may not always be coherent, I find that it has my strongest personal voice. My first drafts are always written just for me. Sometimes I am tempted to share that first draft with others, other times, I am afraid that it will not be seen as refined enough.

I've discovered that a lot of people want to ask me questions about my writing process, and where my inspiration comes from, and I am becoming aware, even as I write this, that I am repeating myself. I don't know where I get my inspiration from, I think it's just there all the time. I listen to music and a line from a song might catch my attention, or I might see a piece of graffiti and contemplate it, believe it or not, some of my best ideas stem from things written in permanent marker on the insides of bathroom stalls.

I try to carry a pen and paper with me always so that I can take a note here and there. It gives me somewhere to vent, and while that means that sometimes I end up free-writing on the bus, glancing up occasionally to make sure no one is reading over my shoulder, I don't really mind. Note: I hate it when people read over my shoulder while I write, like I said, the first draft is for me, it's just getting my ideas laid out, it isn't supposed to make a lot of sense.

I tend to be an oddball, and I get to blame it on my writing. If you catch me staring at you, with a bit of a blank look on my face, it's all right, I'm not really there anymore. I tend to run scenes in my head far more often than I should, and that makes my commute to and from school a blessing and a curse. While I technically spend an hour on the bus each way, I don't really think of it as time spent on the bus. I can be wherever I want to be. Sadly that means that some days I get dangerously close to missing my stop because I'm not paying attention in any way, shape or form to my actual surroundings.

My room is a disaster, with piles of writing in various forms scattered around in my little "filing system" which basically consists of said piles and the concept that what I'm looking for is around here somewhere.

What this all means to say is that I believe, while I have never been published away from this blog, I consider myself to be a writer. I think in some way or another, I always have, and I likely always will. There are few things I am more passionate about, so I imagine that if all else fails and I can't decide what I should write about, just putting my hands on the keyboard will take me somewhere in the same way that putting a pen to paper will.

With any luck, you'll like this, and will leave comments.

Lisa

This week's prize for comments once again goes to Stephen!