10 August 2012

For the Love of Words: Getting Real



I have a very difficult confession to make. I have been a fraud. I am a writer who doesn't write. I'm pretty good at it. I'm passionate about it. I have blueprinted my future on the foundation of writing. I largely associate my identity with it. I've done it all my life. 

I write important emails for my boyfriend. I am one of the few people in my generation who still sends hand-written cards to friends and family. I do a few guest posts on friends' blogs here and there. I even get paid to write at my 9-5. 

But somewhere in the past year, I stopped writing about what counts, when it counts. I got busy. I didn't have anything important [enough] to say. I had writer's block. I was using all my creativity during the work day. When friends asked how my writing was going, how that book is coming along, I'd say "I'm working on it. It's going. I just need to make more time."  And then I didn't.

And I have felt the big, empty hole left behind for months and months now. Then I felt that I couldn't possibly write anything good anymore because I have allowed my hands and my right brain to atrophy. It was too late.

 Then I started seeing little messages like this blog post by Seth Godin: 

" Writer's block isn't hard to cure.
Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better."

And this one, by one of my writerly friends whom I very much admire:

"I'm afraid of using a bunch of words to say nothing. Or using a bunch of words to say what's already been said. So, sometimes, I really do just say nothing. Is that writerly? I wonder."  

To which my answer is YES.

So...this blog is making a comeback. And I am about to get real.





 “It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.”
―Robert Hass

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