Write Me

Writing for me has always come with a unique set of challenges.  I have occasional moments of brilliance (in which I stoke my ego by allowing myself to use phrases such as this) that translate to a few unfinished sentences or paragraphs on a page with nowhere to go and absolutely no purpose.  So then I'm stuck here.  In front of my computer.  With a blank page trying to come up with something new or that unfilled page trying to reach some sort of point or purpose.  And it never really gets anywhere in my experience, which is sad.

I've tried to write down my life story before.  As you can imagine, it failed quite miserably.  I don't know which parts to tell or how to explain them because experiences are always harder to translate into words, for me anyway.  I don't know how to write myself as a character or about my life as a sequence of events.  They don't all stick together in my mind, and sometimes one thing that seemed frivolous begins to feel like the most life-altering thing in the history of the world.

In short, I just don't know what to say.  I don't know how to describe myself.  I feel as though I know who I am, or at least am coming to a better comprehension of this as time goes on, but have no idea how to put that into words and accurately depict it.  To a point, I have the same experience when trying to write about the people in my life, because it really is difficult to capture a human persona with mere words.  But in writing about the people I know, I can usually just select one aspect and focus on it, bring it out and emphasize it in the circumstances in which it presents itself at the time.

When I try to describe myself though, either as a narrator through personality or as a mere character in my writing, I find that I want to compensate for every flaw I have, justify every less-than-elegant decision I have ever made, and that makes the writing seem not only unrealistic but also boring, tiring, bland.  So I never really have managed to write anything that I feel depicts me accurately, even though most things I write attempt to do so at least to a certain extent.

Here's a challenge then, for anyone who will.  Or rather, two challenges.  First off, write me.  Write something about who I am, the way you see me, my flaws and my obsessions, anything that you think fits me.  Second, write yourself.  I challenge you to write a piece that portrays you as accurately as you can with words, no fancy embellishments, just you.  The way you see yourself.  Good luck.