Writers Dreaming

5.) After going though a major trauma at age seven, Angelou didn't talk for almost five years. Could you live this way? Do you think you talk too little? What could you learn if you listened more and spoke less? How could you grow as a person by speaking more? – I think it may be considered arrogant and ridiculous to firmly say I could go five years without talking. But here’s the thing, I think I could. I don’t really like to talk, and I do it too much as it is. I bet I could learn so much if I just kept my mouth shut, I could observe things I never could have before. I’ve never been very adept at reacting to social situations, I understand this. I’ve always felt as if most of my problems come from my mouth. I often say things I don’t mean, and that are in no way what was expected of me. I am a skilled master at making something uncomfortable and awkward. I have a crippling desire to make and keep other people happy, and it may sound like a good thing, but it usually isn’t. If I even think I’ve done something to upset someone I will beg for their forgiveness until they really have no choice but to give it to me. I feel intense guilt over tiny things I did six years ago, and I do and say whatever I possibly can to make other’s laugh. I often suffer from both anxiety and depression, but most of my friends would never know how bad it gets because of the way I act. I never seem sad or down at all. This is done on purpose. So, I think I could go five years without talking. I’d be happier. And me, being happy, this would be a welcome change. And maybe I would grow as a person if I did speak more, if I let people know what I felt all the time, but I'd come to regret it. I know I would. 

7.) Angelou says she often has "total recall" of the events in her life. Are you a person who remembers everything or someone who remembers almost nothing? Which is better to be? Which periods or times in your life are clearest? Fuzziest? Do you have better recall of the times you consider happy or the ones you consider sad or embarrassing or uncomfortable or humorous? – I don’t have some amazing memory. In my case, I will often remember insignificant things that make no real difference to my life at all. I’m always thinking, and so I spend a good deal of time by myself inside my head. And, although I can recall in distinct detail events that may have taken place a decade ago, I cannot take back the memory of what happened last week. However, I do think I have a tendency to either romanticize a memory or completely over-analyze and destroy it. For instance, I think about myself as a young girl and I cripple myself with regret for things I’ve done that really aren’t as disastrous as I’ve made them out to be. And, although I can tell myself over and over again how much all these things don’t matter, I can’t get over much of it. A big part of my personality is how deeply I feel things. I’m either riding high on intense bliss or I’ve exhausted myself with dark sadness. This is part of my problem. My memory seems to only give up material of extremely good things or extremely bad things. Sometimes I wish I was different. But I’m not, and nothing is going to change that. But I think it's better to not remember everything, and to think of everything that's happened as beautiful and golden, to go though life with a kind of ignorance that's bliss-like. That would be lovely.

10.) Angelou quotes Nathaniel West as saying, "easy reading is damned hard writing" and says writing is "just hard work, you know?" Do you agree with this? What is easiest and hardest to you about writing? Is writing hard work?  – If writing is not hard, then I doubt you’re doing it right. For me, writing is emotionally exhausting. Sometimes I’ll be depressed for weeks after writing something. I think that Nathaniel West’s statement was extremely accurate. For me, the only easy writing is the writing I’m forced to do. I have a genuine need to defy authority, so I almost never put my whole self into something I have no choice in creating. However, when it’s my own fate I’m deciding, I do whatever I can to put every ounce of effort into it. This is extremely difficult for me to do. I hope day I will find a way not to make writing easier for me, but I sincerely doubt that day will ever come.