5

My mother suggested I re-read my teenage diary at the weekend. Now, I suppose this is functioning as a diary, though a very public one so it's edited. I was prolific as a teenager though. Between the ages of 12 and 16 I wrote an A4 page every single night, detailing what was probably the tedium of every day of teenage life. I wonder how much angst I've actually written down. I'm worried about how much it will make me cringe because dear god who wants to remember being a teenager. However, I am currently trying to write a novel from the point of view of a 17 year old, so it'd probably help to have the viewpoints of a kid about that age to inform that thinking.
Dear lord isn't being a teenager awful though? Just trying to think back; you don't know enough about life to know how to interact, and every interaction is judged. You've always used your parents as guides but your parents are suddenly the enemy and cool kids (of whom I was never one) start imitating television - seriously, the number of arguments I watched where I wondered who had badly scripted that dialogue was ludicrous. I was no better though, rather than try to interact I pulled back into misanthropy and imagined I was better than everyone else, detesting everyone as being less intelligent and, let's face it, "too mainstream". I was the original hipster. I liked big band jazz before it was cool man. (Or a good 50 years after it was cool, whichever way you want to go).
With my novel, I'm finding I want to go back and edit now, but I know it's a mistake to get pulled away from the actual writing. I need to keep that momentum, even though it gets lost a little when I get out of routine. Hopefully now I've got more free time I should be able to get that 1000 words written every day. I need to bring my laptop to work again, I felt so much accomplishment to have written in my lunch.

I do wonder if anyone's reading this. According to my stats, I get a single American looking every time I put something up, I assume they've just googled wrong. The purpose of this is not really to be read, as you may be able to tell from the rambling nature (if anyone's reading this...) However, to my lone American reader, if it isn't a mistake, howdy! I assume you're a cowboy.