Bail out this
I'd like to think I'm a writer, but somewhere in college (and let's face it : with the crystal ball of hindsight, this started way back in high school) I had to face the truth. In high school I actually won a national writing award for an EXTREMELY BAD story which will prevent me from every entering politics to spare the embarrassment. The classic saying in sports is that a great team can find a way to win a game even when they're playing badly. I indulged in the fantasy to think this way about that hideous story.
I had a good run in the coveted Creative Writing class in college and I remember writing some things that seemed to strike a chord with the students and the Prof and that actually got a lot of people engaged. That was cool. And several years back I got a science blurb published (anonymously) in the Boston Globe in a friendly competition to write an answer to a science question. That was cool too.
But Jenn will know where this is coming from - I wanted so much to be good at writing, that I didn't relax when I wrote, and some part of the writing process was missing from the nether regions of my psyche. On a subconscious level, I accepted that some crucial part of me that is 'on' when I do chemistry, is 'off' when I am writing.
I hear that writers experience the same distracted bliss while writing that long-distance runners report kicks in around mile 3 or 4 of a long run. To be fair, I think this happened from time to time while sitting in front of my very, very, very cool orange monochrome monitor powered by the prized Hercules graphics card; but I would look back at the typed pages and realize it was total crap, try to edit it into something on the page that jived with what was in my mind, and then in the final stage of this cycle of failure, walk away for a bit convinced that I would return later with fresh ideas.
This comes up for a lot of reasons. For example, interestingly I have at least three good friends (let's keep this anonymous even though nobody reads this journal) who are becoming very successful writers in very different ways. Oh, did I mention I married an english major who writes stunningly well? And so it's on my brain. Also, it's the time in the semester where I see one or two students who really want to do chemistry, who really think it's cool grapple with the cold fact that they just can't seem to pull it off, and I truly, deeply empathize with them.
But it also comes up because I'm not happy with this science blog. My theory about this blog was that the Globe blurb worked out pretty well because I was writing about chemistry; and so I would do more of the same. There's something to that I think, but I'm not having fun with it. And naiively I fantasized that writing about science in this little corner of the internet could make a difference. Not yet.
So to the great void of the internet which is better off watching awesome videos like this unreal hockey save: I'm rethinking this stuff, and looking for a different muse. Applications accepted.