i organise a monthly book club with some friends at school, and have realised two things after our most recent meeting:
1. it is absolutely not fertile ground for actual critical analysis (which always leaves me very unsatisfied)
2. i’ve been reading books passively. every time i finish something, i never sit down and do as much as writing down my thoughts or reflections.
my problem with writing is mostly that i think i’m not good enough, and i avoid it because of this: i remember meeting my elementary school teacher a few years ago, when i was in 9th grade, and her telling me that she expected to read something i wrote soon. i hardly believe that she was being serious about it, since she’s pretty old and i was a child when she had me as a student, but it really stuck with me.
a classmate who i really look up to (possibly the only one in my class who i don’t hate) told me that she really sees me working as a journalist in the future. but my school has a newspaper and i wrote the worst, most inconclusive, useless article ever, which i had planned to write months before, as it was about a book i had read during the summer, and in the end i postponed it so much that i forgot what point i wanted to make and had it published even though it made no sense. it is the only thing i ever “published” and the only thing i can say about it is that i hope all copies of it get burned.
other than expressing my embarrassment and self-loathing, what i’m trying to say is that i’m not sure whether writing is actually my calling, despite what people think of me. i never write in my free time - i have a journal but it’s been a while since my last entry and i don’t really say anything meaningful in it. i’ve never written stories despite my love for reading. what could a person like me possibly add to the world, when so much has already been said? i personally find it hard to think i could write something completely new and interesting. but at the same time i detest the idea of mediocrity, because, to me, it feels like when i was finishing that article and only thought, “there’s no point in doing this, what am i even trying to say?”
does anyone have similar experiences with the creative activities they like? if so, how did you get over it and start actually creating?
