Day 30! You’re favourite song from this time last year

Well after a total of 42 days, I’ve finished my 30 day song challenge. I undertook this for a couple of reasons. It looked like fun, my friend Amy was doing it, and I was interested in seeing just what my songs would turn out to be. I decided to put the songs onto my blog rather than just posting them as links of facebook, because I hoped putting them here would encourage me to write about them, and as such to generate more ideas for writing.

I don’t write as much as I would like. When I finished my undergrad, I couldn’t disguise my relief that I would never again have to sit in a creative writing tutorial having my work perused and critiqued by a bunch of amateur writers and a tutor that was oftentimes a bit of a wanker. I felt all the creative juice had been sucked out of me by this rigid analysing and judgment-calling on what constitued good writing. I also felt that my sense of worth as a writer was dependent on whether or not I had been published or not. It was all very ego-killing and draining, and I was glad when it was over. I spent some time writing a fiction piece last year, until my energy ran out and I realised I didn’t care enough about it to keep going. Instead, I decided to throw myself into film studies – and have spent this semester trying to keep up with the crazy cinephile kids who must spend all their free time glued to screens in order to have seen anything and everything that was brought up in class.

I seem to put alot of investment into the idea of having a ‘thing’ that I’m good at. I want to be an expert at something, be recognised for it, and spend all my time with it. When I don’t feel like I’m creating anything or learning anything that contributes to this, I get despondent. I compare myself to other people. I want to give up unless I feel like I’m the best. This goes back a long way. I remember quitting gymnastics as a ten year old because there was somebody there that was better than me. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the idea that I need to have ’skills’… I want to learn how to make stuff, to cook, sew, garden, knit, speak another language, build furniture, make art, operate a film camera and be able to edit film. In some ways I think this is a bit of a similar thing; while I don’t expect to be the best at these things, I’m vested in the idea of self improvement, or being multi-talented, or something. I don’t think this is all bad. The desire to learn and create is good, as is some of my motivation behind wanting to do these things, such as being more environmentally friendly and living more sustainably, learning slow-producing (not sure if that’s the right term) ways to to things, instead of buying everything from china. I realise that this is very in vogue right now, and that I’m not immune from the influence of trendiness. But, if trendiness encourages people to do good, helpful and positive things, then I salute it. But back to what I was saying…

In doing this song challenge, I wanted to encourage myself to write for the sake of writing. Write because I enjoy it, and because it brings out good things in me (erm, most of the time, that is). While I know there will always be the secondary motivation of self-improvement, that nasty, manipulative voice that is the other side of the coin, hopefully there will be enough love and enjoyment of what I’m doing to overcome that.

I hoped in the 30 day challenge to write an average of a hundred words per day. There were several days, especially on the home stretch, that I didn’t write anything. And then days where the words poured out. I read an article for uni that had the results of an experiment in it, in which people were given compulsory writing time, and had to donate money to a charity if they didn’t write. The other group didn’t have this motivator, and were left to their own devices. Not only did the first group write more, but after the experiment was over, they continued to write, because ‘writing generates ideas for more writing’. I like this idea, and it was what I hoped would happen with this blog over the last 42 days. And in a way, it worked. I’m not sure what will motivate me to blog now that this framework has has been completed. I’m sure I could start one myself. I know I don’t want to slip back into the laziness of writing once a month. So I’m going to think of something. Either way, I’ll see you soon.

30 Day Song Challenge Stat’s

Total number of words written: 4,241

Average number of words written each entry: 141 (yes, I beat my aim!)

Most number of words written in one entry: 824 (this post)

Least number of words written in one entry: None (day 23 – the ship song)

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