7 O’Clock on the Dot, I’m in my **** ***

I don’t even want to procrastinate, but I also don’t want to end the day without writing something.  I feel like I need to because of all this reading I’ve been doing lately and will continue doing until the end of the spring semester.

There is a novel I thoroughly enjoyed that is called The World According to Garp written by John Irving in which the main character Garp makes a distinction between the reader and writer.  I think about it often and whenever I do I wonder into which classification I fall.

I can’t call myself a writer because I don’t take writing as a hobby or potential career seriously.  But what if I did?  How much would I improve if I scrutinized my writings?  I would probably end up disliking writing altogether if that were the case; which is perhaps why I don’t take it seriously and only do it for fun.  I must be careful and dispel any confusion by illuminating the difference between the two kinds of writing I mainly do: fictional writing and scholarly writing.  I do not think I have ever written a scholarly essay for fun, not even once.  It has always been for some assignment or task that is school related.  This makes me uncomfortable because I like the main step that precedes the actual process of writing a scholarly paper: research.  So why don’t I do it for fun?  I don’t know.  The idea of doing research for some sort of side project just as a source of entertainment is simultaneously exciting and tiring.

But I can’t really call myself a true reader either.  I’m not like many who soak up and are able to read through novels quickly and efficiently.  I know of at least one probably reading this that has that quality which I envy about her.  I’m slow with novels.  I often have to stop, reflect, write something down, then read the same passage again.  If I read merely for the plot perhaps I would read faster, but I can’t even begin to force myself to do such a thing; though I have tried a number of times.  So it is for this reason I can’t read more than two novels at once unlike a reader such as my mother was and father tries to be.

Now that I’ve thought about it, I don’t care to be tagged as either a reader or writer.  Suck it, Irving.