I dislike my written words
I hate my words, I think they’re clumsy and that the sentences they appear in are often way too long and overstuffed with stuff I overexplain. I just keep adding to them, piling idea upon idea, making them as a last consequence illegible.
I write how I speak and that is often my biggest downfall. Maybe it is that my imagination can’t stretch that far. Maybe it can’t think of words to write that I could never say. Maybe — just maybe however — it is simply a lack of practise.
It is the reason I am writing now - smiling - through familiar agonies.
I want to get better at just writing things from the top of my head. I want to get better at trying to make them fit together later. I tend to edit whilst I write (a writing sin I have so far not been able to shake). It truncates the ideas in my overlong sentences and makes me miss important aspects in the things I write by trying to keep things shorter than they need to be. I don’t let ideas flourish. I want to use this publication to reverse this process. Writings here will appear edited — no one but me gets to see how I write-but hopefully the exercise will prove useful. Make me stop editing words that don’t exist yet. Liberate my writing and help me achieve better words.
Better words in all my languages. I speak German too and want to practise writing it again. It’s not since school that I have done it and it always felt jarring having learned to come up with, write, and plan an essay in German only to then write all the important essays and other things in my life (so far — I use “so far” too much — I don’t like to settle on definites when there is still so much life ahead — this project is here to affect a change after all) in English. Certain techniques of course translate, but that all important feel for language. That fell into the crack between two chairs.
“Caught between zwei Stühlen” will help me remedy that and close that gap in my head. See you on the other side.
