Reply-To: "J.R.Me"
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 08:30:08 -0800
To: "Steve Harrison"
Subject: Random E-mail
Steve,
Short & sweet. In December I started the process of forcing myself to read a book a month. (Okay, so my arm hasn't been twisted off yet) I started with Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" and followed that up with Bret Easton Ellis' "Less Than Zero." I chose that book, by in large, due to a conversation (that I'm sure you'll have forgotten..haha) when I was in high school about how young he was when he wrote the book as his first novel. At the time he hadn't followed up with "American Psycho" or "The Rules of Attraction" and the conversation for some reason has always stuck with me through the years.
As I read the book, it occurred to me that I have held back from putting my writing "out there" because I've judged my writing by my life experience; infantile, not seeing my experiences--or observations of other's experiences--as worthy to write about in a believable way. Somehow, my scriblings of imagination seem (to me) naive. I feel like I've been trying to amass a collection of extremely different lives in the past decade to somehow create legitimacy to the words I put down.
Ultimately, the standard I hold for myself is one that I think I can never reach. The standard then only really becomes an excuse to hide behind instead of actually letting people see my writing. Reading poetry that I wrote in the 3rd grade as simple as the words are on that huge elementary school brown-lined paper, I was saying things that truly did have depth and meaning regardless of experience. I started this e-mail as "short & sweet" and didn't really have a point to writing---hence the subject title. I think ultimately I felt like sharing that when I think of the development of my writing, I still think of you and conversations... and I dare to still dream that one day I will be "out there.'
ALL-ways,
j.r.me
