Fireside Chat

So I'm pretty sure that I quoted the reading for this week, in last week's post. So I'm going to talk about that reading again, but now in context with my Fireside chat.

One thing I'd like to get across that I don't think I did during my chat on belief, is that I don't feel like I'm a journal writer. Those journals are just my tool that is needed for my writing. I bleed on those pages, to paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, none of it is really journal writing, it's just me, in text, on a page.

One of the reasons why I loved James McBride's What Color is Jesus, is that the entire essay feels like what you can find at any time in my journals. My journals are where I brain dump, they are where I talk about experiences I've had, my struggles with preconceptions people have for the kind of person that I am, and writing all of this is therapy. It's redemption.

I believe it is important to get down thought processes we have on paper. I was talking to an author once, and he said that he believes that typing on a computer is too much like learning another language, so it is more difficult to really get the language of our mind in its pure form while typing. This is part of the reason why when I tell people that they should do some sort of journal keeping, I often encourage them to do it freehand (though I think it can be argued that the same problem rests with freehand, but whatever, I legitimately write better when it's on paper).

The last thing I want to talk about is why I framed it with that opening quote by Will Smith. I can actually trace back the moment when I knew that I was going to do everything in my power to succeed in a career in writing. And it was while watching an interview with Will Smith talk about his beliefs on success. I believe 100% that Will Smith is nuts, just certifiably insane. But he is so wise when it comes to his story of becoming not only one of the first black leads in movie history, but becoming one of the highest grossing movie stars in history. So it was really important to me to implement him in some way with my chat, because of the confidence I have as a writer, instilled in me by his wisdom.

Here are a few of my favorite videos:

(this is the video I watched one late night in 2007, only a few months after I bought my first journal actually):

http://video.pbs.org/video/1869183414/

(and then here is the video that has the quote I used in my chat, enjoy how cheesy and awesome this is):