#formandcontent

I haven't written to you in a while. The truth is, I haven't written to anyone, let alone No One, in a very long time. I miss writing, but I can't bring myself to do it. I find myself a slave to my own pseudo-intellectuality. As my tastes in books change, my desire to write changes as well. Well, I shouldn't say that. My desire to write is the same as ever. What I desire to write is currently in flux. I want to write 'serious, soul-changing literature', but I don't want to lose whatever childishness displayed itself in my work before. I don't want to pretend to be an adult, but I can't pretend to be a normal teenager either. I find myself walking into bookstores and not knowing which section to go to. In a similar manner, I find myself picking up a pen and not knowing who to write for.

I used to imagine myself writing to my friends, but those relationships are changing at the moment.

The few projects I've started where I've been writing for myself turned out to be predictably self-indulgent and self-centred.

I could write to you, No One, but as you can no doubt see, my letters to you tend to sound rather pretentious to the point of nausea.

I've considered writing to Nerdfighters, but they are such a vast group of individuals that I can't imagine all of them as an audience at once. Also, I feel like it would be using Nerdfighters for my own artistic gain, which I have no right to do.

I could write to my favourite teacher, but in the past I have found myself unwilling to submit to her any kind of love story, for fear of falling into the teenaged-love-story cliche, when in reality I think that love stories are very effective when done well. They are also really easy to screw up, because they give you such an easy model to work with, I find that most love stories I write fall into the same old pattern, and I myself get caught up in the giggly, romantic gestures befitting writers of Harlequin romance and the teenaged equivalents. I'd love to write an effective, different love story, but that seems like a daunting task for someone with limited experiences in that department. Then again, what do I have vast experience in? There's a question designed to make me feel horrible about myself. Ugh. 

Maybe I should try writing for something instead of someone. But what? Should I write for an ideology or belief or fundamental truth that I hold in my heart? Blech. The death of literature if I ever heard of one. There would be no better way to please those FORM and CONTENT robots than by coming up with a CONTENT and building a FORM around it.