As I haven't updated this website in a good year it got a little bit stale. There is no one to apologize to, unless you're my single fan from Indonesia who downloaded "Yes, Girls Too." We should talk sometime, ya know, if you speak English or know someone who can translate. I always intended to write something weekly, but life gets away from you. I also found other places to post my thoughts in quicker formats, namely Instagram where I like to create little art pieces for my semi-okay poems. Unlike essay or narrative writing, I don't "care" about my poems. I care, but I rarely craft or revise my poems. They're either publishable because they dig at emotions within, or they stay locked forever in a folder I have labeled "drafts." Fully formed or not at all.
I first came to call my poems 'first draft' when I realized I often posted poems that I wrote in a burst and didn't do much else to. It's vulnerable to post poems that haven't had the chance to ripen, but I'm barely a poet. I'm not a serious one. I'm clearly my worst critic but I fully embrace that my poetry is derivative of others, messy, non-formal, but also not experimental. They're mostly nonsense, and almost all about the same girl, but I love them and they mark emotions somehow like waterlines. Sometimes I'm feeling low tide and I want to reveal my wonders, or my sappy heartbreak and fiery wit. I wrote fanfiction for a (long) while and the genre swells with messy half thought fantasy and schmaltz. I got used to the constant feedback and joy of sharing things you love with others. I will forever want to share pieces as they're piecing together, first drafts. Added to this is I recently moved across the country and finally scanned a lot of my old notebooks into my very own archive of terrible writing. Only not all is terrible. All together there are moments of brilliance that if I had more confidence might be full blown publishable writing, but as of now are just fragments of an emerging writer, someone trying things over and over. I want to share some of these almost as if to reveal to the world this famous forgotten person, a younger!Asha whom I don't think I am anymore. Younger!Asha is a good writer but she has no idea what she's doing and she doesn't have a name for it. Older!Asha has the language (some of it) but she still hasn't read a sentence of Joan Didion, so I'm not sure I can call myself any kind of authority on creative nonfiction, but I'm learning. Mostly I'm learning that I was learning how to write memoir and essays and personal narrative before I even knew that was thing. All the memoirs I read as a kid (ie, any time before 30) I labeled biography or autobiography. I have felt insecure about my limited knowledge of Creative Nonfiction with capital letters. Insecure every time a classmate in my MFA names some person who is a blank grey blob in my mind (who is that? what is that? who? WHo?) or some essay they've all read. But...why? If I can write what I write without having read Didion doesn't that make me...amazing? or something? I'm self-taught. Auto-didact, is the college word for it. Maybe this is what my professor calls my "superpowers." I will take it. At least I will tonight, though I know tomorrow will bring me a new way to feel insecure about it and I will TRY to make up for it. So, this will be a blog of sorts, a place to ramble and write and try things. A home or hub for my first drafts. It feels naughty to share unfinished and unpolished work but some of these pieces would never be more than they are and why shouldn't I share them? Who benefits from the labor I put into producing these tiny gems if they remain digital files on my computer? Maybe they'll show some other younger!Asha out there that we're the same, that no one spits out gold, that first drafts are as important as crafted pieces, that process is a part of craft. Ultimately, I need no reason but my will to share. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I'm an honest person. In that spirit I present First Drafts, a blog for messy writing, forgotten writing, and a place for me to share the insecurity of being. Being a writer, being a poet, being alive, take your pick.
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first draftsraw, unedited (or mildly edited), fresh thoughts, observations, and miscellaneous writing. Archives
March 2021
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