Thursday, October 4, 2012

Today, I Write

Just because I am currently applying for an MFA does not mean that this blog is going to become a blog about writing. Nor is it going to become a blog about not writing, though that is more probable based on my slow progress in the application process so far. I blame some of this on the fact that my readers have not returned the writing sample that I sent them to look over, but perhaps that draft was just so terribly boring that they couldn't bring themselves to finish it, on account of falling asleep each time they pulled it out for a perusal. Or perhaps it was just so horrendously flawed that they have not yet finished all of the revision suggestions that it requires.

Today (and by today I mean tonight) I am writing a statement of purpose/vision statement/personal statement/purpose statement. In other words, a 1-2 page summary of who I am, why I write, what makes me unique, my particular talents, my goals, dreams, ambitions, and why in the world anyone ought to let me into their intimate, selective, prestigious writing program. You know, the normal stuff. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to sit on the other side of the table; to sift through carefully crafted summaries of young writers' developments, dreams, and aspirations the way that I currently glance through the 2.5 credit card offers that I receive on a daily basis. Perhaps this is the reason I procrastinate, because I somehow believe that the less time I spend on this statement, the less it will hurt if it is rejected.

I have been told that they things a writer does while she procrastinates writing are the very things she ought to be writing about. In which case I ought to conjure a witty narrative of the difference between the delicate cycle and the casual cycle on my laundry machine and whether or not my super-synthetic hot pants get upset when the realize they are in the same cycle as my Northwestern Lacrosse t-shirt. Or maybe I could write an ode to my dishwasher, the machine that washes, but never dries the slew of tupperware contained inside. I ought to have scads of essays on baking cookies, folding underwear, and checking facebook, which takes up such a large part of my free time I am ashamed to admit it.

Why is it that I cannot focus on this thing that I love? This thing that I say I wish to pursue and on which I am willing to spend thousands of dollars and hours of arduous unpaid labor? I will invest years of my life that I will never get back, and yet I will not forego an episode of Glee in order to read an article on how to "set apart" my application. I tell myself that when the time is right I will do it. I will write. But that day has not come and time is moving on. So today (which is actually tonight) I will write. Imperfectly. Haphazardly. Distractedly. But I will write. And tomorrow I will wake up, procrastinate, complain, blog, and then I will do it again.

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