Dangerous writing: the necessary risks of writing for “real”
i wasn’t expecting my research into dangerous writing to lead me into a 1980s master’s thesis on childhood english education, but maybe this one is important for me to remember…
plus anna’s story had me gripped from the start.
maybe what sticks out are the thoughts of writing as play… it’s easy to think of myself as an illegitimate writer because i never made an attempt to fashion myself as a writer in the way that so many purple-tongued self-described wenches online seem to. i’ve never gotten anything published, nor have i “seriously” self-published anything of my own accord. and honestly, while i’ve usually had a writing project or two to idly think through at any given time, they usually are given a lower mental priority than everything else. so it’s easy for me to think of myself as a pretty unskilled writer, all things considered, since i never wrote fiction in the “legitimate,” “proper” form that written works typically come packaged in.
but when i think about writing as play, i start to realize that i have written quite a lot! it just has come in the form of external forces acting as springboards or inspiration points, like the albums i listen to or the things which happen to me. it might be fair to say that the vignettes which come from these are as valid a form of writing as any other.