On Writing

I was reading an article in 'Psychology Today', about how the urge to write is now classified as an honest to God mental illness.

I can't remember what they call the disorder, but it's a real condition and a lot of people suffer from it.
Apparently, if you have the disorder badly enough, you can even get medication to help you control your writing problem.

The article quoted one woman who had to get up in the middle of the night to write things. She'd wake up, and the compulsion to write would be so strong, she'd write on her bedroom walls, or all over her arms and legs.

I'm not that bad, but I do lay awake at night composing different blog entries in my head.

Sometimes I'll get up to write them, and sometimes I'll make myself fall asleep and then have weird dreams.

My writing problem is a bad one, but I feel better since I switched to typing on the computer. Back when all I had was a journal to write in, my thumb was giving me great pain due to, I think, some sort of thumb arthritis caused by holding my pen.

I also have a permanent lump on my ring finger from holding a pen.

For a while I was writing so much that I had to take a few days off from it because I was developing a shooting pain from my wrist to my elbow.

So I find that typing is much better than writing with a pen.

I feel sorry for all the great poets and writers from the past because I'll bet they all had really messed up hands and arms.

The way a peson writes though is different depending on what medium they use.

Writing with pen and paper is far more personal than typing.

This blog isn't like my journal, of course. It's really more of a weird article/commentary thing I've got going on. Every now and then I'll toss in a personal story or two, but for the most part I'm just rambling.

I don't usually even know what I'm going to write about until I sit down and start writing. Sometimes I even surprise myself.

I don't ever edit any of these blog posting either. This is Barbie writing at her worst.

I don't really know if I'm any good at writing, but I do enjoy writing a great deal.

I was kind of feeling bad that I've been doing nothing but sitting around and posting to my blog, but I think maybe it has been really good for me.

For instance, the more I realize how much I like writing, the more I think I should go and see if I can get into Grad school for Journalism.

I know that you haven't got to go to school to be a journalist, but you can get some great internships if you go that route, and the most important thing to have as a journalist is work experience.

It's how you get a great job writing a humor column.

I told my mom my plan and she told me that she always thought I'd grow up to write a humor column, like Dave Berry.

Mark Twain even started out as a Journalist. It's what inspired his book, "Innocence Abroad."

He wrote it because he was working as a travel journalist at the time.

The trouble with me and Mark Twain, though, is that I once read in a biography about Mark Twain that a psychic had told him that he would either be a famous lawyer, or a famous writer.

I was young when I read that, so I've had it in my head for a long time that a person could either go into law or else write books. I guess I thought that writing energy was the same as legal energy, that's really where my law school idea came from.

I also thought I might enjoy law school too, because there is a lot of writing and research involved, and I love to write and to research different topics, of course.

John Grisham started out as a lawyer. If I remember correctly, he hated it and was miserable. He would pass the time he had to spend each day on the train to work writing legal thrillers on his lap top computer, all while dreaming of becoming a famous writer.

I guess law doesn't really sound all that appealing. . . . . . .according to John Grisham, being a lawyer sucked.

I'll bet that I'd enjoy j school much more than I would law school.