When I think what is it I want to write about, many things pass through my mind. I want to write to share experiences, to hear other people’s experiences, to teach, to learn, to express, to make an impression, to create conversation, and most importantly, I want to write to…
That’s always the question. I know I want to write, but what is it that needs to be written? What is it that I can contribute to the literary world and the world beyond just the scope of the internal monologue that writers feel is so good and must be shared. Are writers naturally narcissistic? Are we all just so self-important that we feel like we have righteous domain over what is to be said and how it is to be dictated? The diction dictators?
It is this biggest barrier I have found within myself when I try to write something other than literary analysis, reports, or novels. I could write about the deeper and allegorical meaning of a haunted house’s upper left window for a hundred pages, but when I try to write about my life or some personal epiphany I had that I think others may relate to, my fingers stall above the keyboard. Watching that little line blink over an over waiting for the genius to hit me, it feels akin to watching the days I don’t write, flash past.
I have made the big step of going back to school for English to get a better paying job in a new field. When people ask me what it is I want to do with my eventual degree, I chuckle a little and say write. Being a writer is a legitimate career path obviously, but I feel that those who are successful at it have that gift for not only good writing, but for knowing what it is they want to write about. Gods, I wish I had that.
All writers are readers but not all readers are writers. When you fall into that first category, you tend to write in the style of what you like to read. My favorite genre from a personal and academic standpoint is Gothic literature. I have written about how Gothic themes are still oh so relevant in our modern world, but people find that to be a downer rather than relatable. So how can I make Gothic happenings into something that the average reader would find acceptable and agreeable? If you are lost right now and think Gothic only refers to architecture or only wearing all black, let me broaden your horizon.
Gothicism is part of the Romanticism literary movement following the Enlightenment period at the end of the 18th century. The Enlightenment period followed the tracks of Greek and Roman philosophy that rhetoric is to be logical and concise. Romanticism sought to take a different route where the soul of the writer created their rhetoric full of emotional descriptions and related life to aspects of nature. Romantics (writers in the Romanticism style, not those obsessed with romance) wanted to incorporate the human condition, and all the mess that comes with it, into the discourse at hand. While this movement was not well received by the reigning overlords who prized order and piousness above all, other writers soon learned that the expression of self was something to delve deeper into and not shy away from.
Now, it is this exact ideal that I love to study and find so much importance in but somehow find myself having such a difficult time achieving in my own writing. Why is that do you think? Is it a lack of confidence? Probably. But should I let that stop me? Probably not. When I am struggling with the cyclical imposter syndrome I find myself encased in in whatever endeavor I throw myself into, I remember Van Gogh. He was and will forever be the most impeccable artist who ever existed, but when he was alive, no one thought he was even worth simple human decency. Regardless of the hate and criticism he faced daily along with the voices of doubt in his own mind, Van Gogh still painted. He still created. He still walked that path that brought the greatest sense of happiness and personal accomplishment into his life. That is what writing is for me.
All I am trying to say with this self-important monologue is that you have to find your Van Gogh. Find your one beacon of light in the shit-dark world around us that tells us we can’t or we shouldn’t. Find that inspiration that brings you back and tells you that you can and that you should. Find that single burning candle in the upper left window of your haunted house.
I know we all want that life-affirming moment of getting in the groove or finding your gusto, but first, youmust find that one thing that no matter how hellish the world is around you, brings you just a modicum of solace.
Write. Read. Repeat. 
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