I'm going to take a rare break from my attempted-professional posts and touch on some slightly personal stuff (Don't worry, I'm not going to get all weepy) so if you have no interest in that, don't read this post, 'cause there's nothing here for you. I may also swear a lot.
I'm not going to say that I was 'born' to write, because that's bullshit on so many levels. But there's definitely something in my blood, a drive so voracious and annihilistic that it demands my life's attention. I started at eleven years old, writing short fantasy novels inspired by old RPGs like Breath of Fire and Terry Pratchett's children's stories. The Hobbit was the be-all and end-all of literature for me then, and in a way I miss that time. I was so naíve at the time that I actually believed it would be as simple as to write something and it would somehow magically appear from the ether as a book, and readers, well, they'd just read it because it was a book.
In short, I was no different to any other kid with stars in their eyes. And I don't assume to be now, which some friends may find hard to believe. Throughout my evolution as a person and a writer, I have known that "I" am not important, in my writing. Which is why I remove as much of myself from my work as I can, leaving only what's needed - cold, hard, regurgitated facts, and straight personal truth in opinion pieces. If I think something's good, I'll praise it to the very best of my literary powers, and I'm as careful as my reckless ways allow when it comes to getting things right and providing balance over bias. If something's bad or I just take a disliking to it, I'll yell about it for as long as I can get away with, or just rip it to shreds with a few barbs of sarcasm.
But I'll always try and keep that balance there, because that is the single most important rule, in my book. As a writer, maintaining balance in your work is paramount. It should always be right there at the forefront, because not everything you write will please people, not everything you write will be good, but if you have that balance there, you're in the clear. For a writer, especially a journalist, it's the line between you and those raving lunatics who write for the Daily Mail and send mindless hatemail to advice columns. It's the line between you and whatever you think your soul is.
Writing is important to me. It's my sole imperative, my own embedded reason to exist, from which everything else grows and expands. Back in my early, early teens I used to churn out directionless fiction every day. I didn't care if it was good, I just cared that it was there. During my typical teenage angst phase I would write and listen to music. Pretty much anything, in fact, until my tastes started to develop and I found my own little niche in teenage culture. I guess that's how music and writing became so intertwined in my head. I can't do one without the other.
It was such a defining part of my life that when I began my little rebellions, I started acting out against myself. I would refuse to give in to the compulsion to write, and I started trying to drill it out of my life. Fuck knows why, but I just thought it was some stupid leftover part of my childhood. After a good few years of that, I was unhappy, deeply. Games had taken over my life and my spare time, of which there was plenty. I had gotten fat, my hair was long and lank because I just didn't do anything with it. To top it off I decided to study media at college because I figured I could pretend I knew what I wanted to until something came along. I kept telling myself I could work in film, and I deluded myself in that vein for a while.
To cut things short, I grew up. Things started to change for me. I started writing again and it felt amazing. But slowly, so slowly I barely noticed it, I stopped writing fiction and moved into reviews, features, stuff like that. Eventually it would change what I wanted to do with my life, as so often happens, which is how I ended up studying Journalism at University. From then on I started throwing myself into life more. Rather than just taking life at a laidback pace, I vowed to take it by the horns, and so everything I did, I did with great enthusiasm. Like whatever I was doing at that very moment was the best thing in my life. I ended up with legions of Warhammer models to paint, a neglected bass amp in my spare room, so many books left on the shelf unread, and heaps of responsibilities to worry about alongside all the bits of myself I just didn't have time for.
I tried to do everything, but focused so hard on doing everything I could that I ended up doing nothing. I was too spoilt for choice on how to spend my time, so I stopped appreciating it. There were three major parts of my life, all time-consuming, all important. Literature, including the student magazine I put my heart into, and my own work, music, and finally, games - Warhammer, PS3, 360, and PC, the amount of games I bought and didn't play was disgusting.
After a lot of worrying about what I was going to do, I came to one simple conclusion. As much as it sucked, one of those things was going to have to go. It's probably pretty obvious that gaming, mainly Warhammer, was the thing to go. With life picking up pace by the day, I can no longer afford to spend four hours playing one game when I have features to write, albums to review, coursework to be done. I love the hobby but compared to writing, it's nothing to me.
It's as simple as that. My 'free time' and my 'work' are one and the same now. I can genuinely write work as recreation. When you're starting something that becomes a lifestyle like music journalism, it's hard to separate 'free time' and work time'. So I'm going to focus on my career now, because I want it to be my life. That's all.
-SZ
(Regular content updates resume tomorrow)
