If you can recall a post I had written last June (right HERE, if you need a refresher), I was involved in my church’s Writing & Content team for the summer. Toward the end of summer, there was a writing session where only three of us could make it for that week. The leader, me, and another guy.
At some point, we were discussing about what kind of topics we were thinking about writing. In a half-joking matter, the non-leader guy – let’s call him Jay – expressed his frustration at how he had all these good ideas when he’s talking to other people about them, but when he sits down to write these ideas, he doesn’t remember them anymore.
“It’s almost like I need to carry a voice recorder with me,” Jay said. “Just so I don’t keep losing all my ideas.”
“It sounds like you’re an extroverted* thinker,” I remarked. He gave me a blank look, so I continued on. “I’m the same way. I have to write things down or say them aloud in order to process my thoughts. I probably look like a crazy person when I’m mumbling to myself, but it works.”
I don’t know if Jay ever employed any tactics to help him out since then – he did state that he lives alone in his apartment, so at least no one can judge him if he talks out loud to himself – but I’ve been thinking about this exchange lately.
Like I mentioned in my last blog post, I’ve been actively writing for the past nine days. (Well, I’m not counting today. I still plan on writing later tonight. This post technically doesn’t count.) My original plan was to begin my super short writing goal on Feb 18, but it didn’t quite happen that day. False start.
But since last Tuesday, I’ve been making an effort to write a little bit each day. The idea is to write at least an hour, but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Sometimes it’s only 30-45 minutes. Last Saturday I wrote for almost two hours. It all depends on how much time I have allotted myself in the evening and whether I’m in a mood to write more.
Surprisingly, none of them are fiction pieces. I’m honestly not quite sure what to call them. Personal essays? Some of them are memories that I’m writing about; others are just something interesting that had happened in my day, and I felt compelled to basically record it. Not like I live a very exciting life in the first place.
But the fascinating tidbit about them is, in all of their closing paragraphs, I seem to circle around the same two or three topics. Clearly there are some concerns that my brain feels important enough to keep calling attention to. It’s processing and reevaluating.
The big question is: can I find ways to resolve these particular issues/worries?
Either way, the workings of the mind can be cool and weird at the same time.
*If you research any sort of Myers-Briggs test, they will give you a completely different definition of what makes a person an extroverted or introverted thinker. (And that’s only if your dominant trait is Thinking rather than Feeling.) I wish I could remember and locate the article I had read long ago, but basically, the “extroverted thinking” I’m referring to is when you do your best thinking by having a conversation – whether with someone else or pretending that you are. So in a sense, you seek out people to bounce ideas off of. The “introverted thinker” is fine with just sitting there and sifting through the thoughts in their heads.
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