A friend and I are doing a 21-day writing challenge. Basically, we write something every day, and send it to each other. It doesn't have to be inspired by a thought or experience we had that particular day, it just needs to be written on that day. It's a great idea, and most of the time I enjoy doing it. Recently, however, I feel like I'm running out of things to write about. For several days I've been writing about daily activities, probably some reflections behind it, which gets old. Doesn't seem exciting or interesting to write about. Funny how this happened several days after I had just felt my writing quality has picked up. My previous blog post, for example, the one on missing my flight, came out from last week's daily writing. I had gained more pride in my blog, knowing this daily writing exercise has shaped my stories for better reading experience.
Anyway, that bubble burst. For now, probably. The point of this challenge is to write every day even when we don't know what to write about. To be fair, the timing is also significant. All the GISTers are in Singapore for a mid-point Rendezvous session. In a day or two, we'll all be presenting our projects' progress report, and I've been working very hard on it. It's the first time I might actually be doing a "formal" presentation, a bit more businesslike, less exploratory, emphasis on process and highlighting steps. Less touchy-feely, if you must.
For the last couple of days I've been re-reading all of my notes since the start of GIST in January. These are discouragingly full of potential knowledge. I'm proud for capturing all the work such that all the memories are accessible upon re-reading. However, reading the notes is like performing a circulation of my mind, kind of like this:
Memories go into writing -> Memories go inside head -> Thoughts/Reflections/Analysis -> Re-reading memories in writing -> "Right, I remember this. Oh, I had forgotten about that. Okay." -> close notebook. What now?
By reading what I thought I have remembered, I'm flushing out some of these memories. It's a struggle to explain what this "flushing out" feels like, but basically, it leaves my head a little emptier. I guess this is kind of good news (more space for new memories), but also very, very strange. I feel a little vacant. Blank.
Memories work in wildly peculiar ways. Somehow as I was writing this, I remembered a piece by Junot Diaz, about how and why he became a writer. It's the kind of story I like: a highly successful person writing about their struggles, and the moments where they felt like a failure. As an observer, it's hard to imagine a Pulitzer Prize winner being anything other than a winner. But even winners had had setbacks. What really happened at those moments, and how did they carry themselves get to the other side? Who knows? Maybe one day I'll get to enjoy a smashing success, and people would wistfully assume I had "knew it all along". Pretty soon after, I would be inclined to agree with them. Of course I was born to be a success. Then someday I'll look back at this daily writing project and remembered, humbly, the days when my mind went blank.