Clash

I wanted to write something new. I have felt the urge lately, you know, that pressing, kneading urge in your gut to create something wonderful. But I couldn’t think of anything and the time slipped away. Now it’s Sunday and all I have the poetry that’s been sitting on my desk for 6 months. It’s my work and I keep thinking that I wish I liked it more. I wish I was more satisfied with it. But I’m not.

I want to write but the hollowed shell that used to house my ideas is suddenly full of all the different languages I’ve spent so much time trying to learn. My stories now start with この夢を見た。My poetry and all my songs begin with ずっと. And I don’t know where to go from here. How do I kick start all the ideas I have from Japanese horror stories, Korean drama, and Chinese love stories into Strunk and White’s no foreign languages rule?

I feel like there is so much that I should be doing. When I was 13 I had myself convinced that I would publish my first book before college, my second and third during, and continue like this for the rest of my life. That was before I discovered my passion for other languages.

Rachel was right when she said that translation was an art. So right that it made me wonder if I should be translating instead of mere writing. But a part of me dies at the thought. What serious writer would be content at profiting, if you can profit, from another writer’s creativity? I want to write my own story but I seem to be so much better suited for translation.