Well, I've just spent a day moving all of my book reviews from my old blog to this one. I paused when I was about 75% through asking myself why I was bothering: shouldn't a new blog be about starting fresh? I want to use this opportunity to change how I'm writing, so why bring along all the old stuff along?
After thinking about it for a while, I realised that wanting to change and - more importantly - improve my writing, means I need to confront the way I have been writing. I'm awful for not proof-reading my own work. For some reason, I cringe at my own creations, judging them before anyone else has the chance to so that if anything I write is criticised, I can jump on board and express the fact that I already know it's not great. Instead of defending the things I write, or even explaining why I made the decisions I did, I'd rather just agree that I'm not very good.
But that's not true. By no means am I a great writer, I have a lot to learn, but I'm also not bad. I have work published online and I get good marks in my university work. When I take the time to write properly, I'm not half bad at turning a phrase. Though I pushed myself to create a blog and am proud that I've been putting my thoughts out there for a year now, when it comes to my reviews I tend to write and publish without pausing. This technique is part of what's got me this far; if I don't stop to think too much about how someone could critique my work then I have no problem sharing it with the world.
In order to improve, however, this is the first thing that I want to change. To be truly confident in my work I need to confront it head on, editing and adjusting to ensure what I'm trying to say is clear. Alongside this, the blog move is to encourage me to write more than just book reviews. I love reviewing and it's going to remain the core of my blog, but I often have more to say than a review can encompass. I've been sat around waiting for the opportunity to write about these things but in the process I've been ignoring the stage I created for myself.
Over the years I've watched my fiction writing stagnate until I simply stopped. Now I often refuse to write because I don't like facing my lack of ability. As I confront my old reviews and change my habits, I'm hoping to reignite my passion for fiction writing and create some really bad stuff. That's right. I want to create bad things. And then I want to learn from those bad things and write some okay things. And then I want to learn from the okay things and write some good things. And so on and so forth until...well, I guess you never stop learning so I'll just keep going and going and hopefully continue developing as a writer.
In the past I've given myself permission to write. Now, I'm telling myself too - ordering, in fact. To write freely, to experiment, to simply create. And to enjoy doing so.