Stretching My Writing Muscles

I've been trying to write more. Obviously, you know this if you've been reading this blog. But, I've been using this as a way to stretch those muscles for more than just academic papers, especially now that I've graduated. Now that I'm free of that, I can try to find my personality and writing style, without restriction.

But mainly, it's been about organizing my thoughts. Whenever a thought comes into my head, it's all jumbled, and when I try to speak, I stumble all over myself to where I'm unintelligible. It's not a great feeling when you're trying to impress someone when you can barely form a coherent sentence. Hopefully by writing more, whether it's journal entries like this one or thoughts on the world/culture, those processing skills can become faster and that can translate when I need to speak.

Also I need to work on length.

journal

I Love a Musical

I can't sing, dance, or act at all, but I love musical theater, and that extends to movie musicals. It's a love that's been passed down from my family. One of my parents' first dates was to see the original Broadway cast of Les Miserables. The first movie I ever saw in a movie theater was The Wizard of Oz. Granted, I was four and fell asleep in the first ten minutes, but it still counts.

A lot of this love because I grew up just after most of the animated movies of the 80s and 90s Disney Renaissance came out, so I had all of those films on VHS. Beauty and the Beast is probably my favorite as well as the best of them. But I love pretty much all of them. Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan, Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (which is highly underrated). I have a playlist on my phone full of these songs that I regularly listen to.

In terms of actual musicals I love, it runs the gamut. Hamilton, Company, Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, Chicago, Kiss Me, Kate, Into the Woods, The Last Five Years, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, Anything Goes, Wicked, and honestly that's just what I could think of while writing this, there's probably more.

Musicals, even the really dark ones, are escapism for me. No matter what mood I'm in, there's a musical that can help me forget for a bit. Especially if those musicals have performance clips or were made into a movie, I watch those numbers and can spend hours watching them and have a good cry. Or if I need a good cry, there are plenty of sad songs for me to lip sync to and feel all of the feels.

Musicals get a lot of flack as being stupid because why would people break out into song and dance, and have that be a believable thing someone would do. I love it. Beautiful melodies and flying around or participating in a large dance break. I wish I could sing and dance and be able to do that in my regular life. So why can't you make that leap in your brain and allow this little bit of fantasy in?Because if you could express yourself flawlessly through song and dance, wouldn't you want to?

the theatre, thoughts

Earworm: "Rip Her To Shreds" by Blondie

 I just recently saw a magazine cover doing that whole best/worst bikini body thing, I think the first of this summer. And it reminded me of this song. This song is about gossip columns. It was released in 1976, and still true to this day. It's been over forty years since this song came out and those gossip rags have not changed one bit in how they write about celebrities, especially female celebrities. It is bullshit.

On top of all of that, this song is a really great punk rock song.

earworm

Writer's Block

Writing is so hard. I have ideas for stories all the time, but they never come to me in order. So when I finish piecing them together, it does not even resemble an intelligent thought. And it sucks because it sounded, at least, good in my head, and it when it ended up on the page (word document) it was bleh. This isn't the self-deprecating bleh that you see a lot of creative people sometimes say in regards to their work. It is objectively bleh.

Even tiny blog posts like this where it's just my rambling thoughts. The amount of times I delete lines and rewrite them is ridiculous.

Ugh. Back to writing.

journal