Writing & Sylvia Plath

Since I was a teenager and I discovered "The Bell Jar", I realized writing was what I was meant to do with my life.  Even though when I entered college, I chose this journalism profession because it was such a dream of mine to become a magazine editor.  Though this dream has since faded, since you have little to no personal life and that's not a life I want, I have found other skills learned through it that I enjoy and want to do things with when I graduate.
But that's not the point of this post.  Since I was about fourteen, I started writing.  Most of it, if not all of it was pretty horrible, mediocre stuff.  When I was sixteen, and thought I had fallen in love, I wrote some equally bad poetry.  Though I do think some of that stuff was fair.  One in particular about a beaten horse, I was particularly fond of.  Now, I was not beaten.  It was obviously a metaphor for the way I was treated.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure I still have it.  There was another poem about a cocoon, which needs to be reworked a bit, but is still a fairly decent poem.  That cocoon poem was written towards the end of our "affair", or whatever is equally meaningless that would describe whatever "it" was.  I was involved with this same guy from about sixteen to nineteen.  We were off and on fairly frequently, and it was not ever official.  He was using me, and I let him.  He was the first guy that I went on a date with, that ever showed me romantic attention.  And I thought it would be the only guy that ever would, so I became a little clingy.  Even after he told me he only called me when he wanted to fool around.  He was such a dick.
The point which I am so good at dancing around, is that I have always had these urges to write.  Even as a child, I loved to steal different writing books from elementary school for the summer so I could practice my cursive, do word problems, or write stories.  It's always been something I yearn for.  My mother always bought me journals which I would fill out for a week or two and then forget about.  I've always had this love for metaphor, imagery, and poetry.  It's an easy thing to wrap my brain around.  I think that's just the way it works in there.
Looking back, it should have been my degree all along.  However journalism has taught me that there is a certain journalistic style of writing that I love.  These are character pieces.  These are factual stories, but where you go and stay with the person you're writing about, you become their friend, and these beautiful stories come out of it.  That reality is what makes them so beautiful to me.  While I do love writing, and fiction writing has never been hard for me, there's something so much grittier, so much more beautiful about portraying real people.
I have read fictional stories of course, and I'm sure there are writers out there who don't think the story they're making up about the people/situations that inspire them can be as interesting as the real thing, but that's precisely why they are.
I myself have decided to embark, finally, upon these novels, that stew around in my head all day long.  Just these beautiful quotes floating around in my head that most wouldn't give second glance to.  I love the story.  I love the intracacies of everyday people.  The very strange part is it's the workplace that does it.  I don't want to write a novel about my personal life, as Plath tried to for years.  That's not as interesting to me as other people.  As a journalist, just listening to people at work tell me their stories is fascinating.  The novel I will write about where I'm working now, in which the place will be concealed as much as possible, is going to have character chapters.  I'm not sure if there will be several chapters of different characters.  My stronger suit in writing that is not poetry is short stories.  So it will be like a string of short stories, about people who work in this place.  Novels are hard for me because I tend to want to get to the point quickly.  While I may use imagery quite frequently, it's hard to build a novel around that, for me anyway.  There really is no story here, just a collaboration of different people with their own ongoing problems, their own continuing stories.  My story won't be continuing here and this will be the only meaningful thing to come out of it.
Though I'd be lying if I said it was completely original.  These stories are based off of real people, some actual facts, and others I'm adding.  I guess that's where the journalist in me comes along.  I don't want to distort the facts so much that the real beauty of these people is lost.  But at the same time, you have to add more than you know to tell the story.

This summer I'm finally able to delve into reading again.  You know, really reading for pleasure.  "Her Husband", about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, which I now have the time to get back into inspires me in almost the way her diary does with writing, and new ideas.  Her journal keeping was insane.  She wrote about everything.  Things like ingredients for cooking, or the immaculate details of her husband's wardrobe.  I wish I could keep a journal.  I'm so bad at writing every day, especially about the mundane details of my life.  However, this is said to be the way to really become the writer you're supposed to be, to really find your style of writing.  I am very bad at this.  I may possibly be the longest winded person on the planet, and all I can think about is how long I just spent writing or typing, and the other stuff I could have been wasting time with.  But the more I think about it, the more I realize that those other things really are a waste of time, this is not.

As a sidenote, well another side note:  I have ideas and notes about seven poems right now.  I've become dreadfully afraid of being creative again.  Though it isn't something I can even forcefully keep myself from for very long, there's something exposing about it.  As though I'm exposing a plethora of emotions, along with exposing myself to my own harsh rejection.  I don't know if that's why writing can be laborious for me to start.  Once I start I'm great, and most of the time I feel better.  But I avoid even writing down ideas for poems, so that I will not have to write them.  Very strange, I know.  But I think I avoid the things I am actually good at, to avoid finding out that I'm not as good as I thought.

Another sidenote:  I am a smoker again, I am not running, and I have not been cleaning as much as I should.  However, my kitchen is spotless after I cleaned it this afternoon, and before we cooked dinner. ;)  Alas, I am not the housekeeper Plath was.  She would have found my housekeeping to be atrocious.  And with that, I promise I'm through.