These are the Facts

Fact: I make my bed every single day.

Making my bed doesn’t feel like a chore. It feels like a sense of control. My brain craves the order and consistency that making my bed every day provides. Writing creative nonfiction provides a similar sense of satisfaction. When I put a memory onto the page, in any form, it’s like a sense of release in my head. Getting the words and images that are swimming around out into the world brings about a sense of euphoria (no, not like the show). If I had to sum up the experience, it could be described as a stress relief. Writing creative nonfiction is reinforcing what I already knew as truth simply by putting it into words on a page.

Fact: I drink a lot of coffee.

Drinking coffee doesn’t always wake me up, but it does help me get into the mood for writing. I guess drinking coffee could be seen as aesthetically pleasing, which is completely true in my case. Sometimes the words just can’t flow without a cup of coffee sitting on a coaster next to my workstation. The smell of coffee in the morning brings forth the image of the baby-faced sun in Teletubbies. The coffee I drink provides a sense of assurance that everything, no matter how bad my writing may be, will be all right.

Fact: I am mildly insecure.

Most of the time my insecurities don’t get in the way. Lately, however, more and more people that I knew in high school are publishing works like poetry collections or short stories in magazines. If the people that I knew in high school who are younger than me are already farther ahead in my career category, what does that say about my abilities as a writer? Am I secretly thinking that I chose the wrong major as a senior? Yes. Am I going to change my major this far into my college career? No. Remembering not to compare yourself to others on a completely different life path is easier said than done.

Fact: I have high-functioning anxiety.

It is important to me that everything is in the correct place on my desk. My laptop goes on the left. Then my journal with the book for class resting on top. Then the pen is placed on the far right of the desk, aligned with the edge of the desk. I try not to let my anxiety shine through too often, but it gets hard to mask it during our Writer’s Circles. I try to focus on listening to constructive criticism, but the desperation for the whole endeavor to be finished overrides my system. Next time, hopefully, I will have created a strategy to keep my attention on the task at hand.

While what I have said thus far is factual, I have one opinion that carries more weight than all the facts combined. Despite the difficulties of writing creative nonfiction that have overwhelmed me this semester, I love this form of writing most of all.