I haven't written here in a while. Until earlier this week I hadn't really written anything, anywhere in a while. I could chalk it up to stress and busyness, to overwhelming amounts of work while trying to get my life together, but that stuff happens all too frequently and I still find the time and energy to write a bit here and there.Admission: it was fear.
I began fearing that I could no longer write. Then I began questioning my ability to write at all. Dark, heady thoughts overwhelmed me. My writer's block became an avalanche of negativity collapsing in on my writer's mind and suffocating any spark or glimmer within me to write.
Yet I knew through all of this that I wanted to write. I needed it. It's as vital to me as breathing, which may sound hyperbolic but anyone who writes knows the feeling. To lose belief in your ability to write starts to affect any belief in your being.
I'm not sharing the secret of what dug me out of this pit (though it didn't dig me out so much as pierce through with a brilliant blue light and haul me out), because it’s not what gets you out so much as the realization once it happens that you can and are meant to write. In one day I wrote (physically wrote, you know, with a pencil… on paper… in a book… like the olden days) twenty-five pages of material. My brain has been afire with the writing twitch all week, and while it isn’t for projects already in existence or new projects I believe will go anywhere, the mere act of writing again – and profusely – is overwhelming in the best possible way.
Whether you’re plugging away at a project you feel had stagnated, are stuck in the depths of writer’s block, or write everyday without fail and yet feel unsatisfied: I know it’s rough. If you need encouragement, I will be happy to cheerlead, or chastise, or help in any way I can.
If there’s one thing I’ve realized over the past few weeks it’s that wallowing in your frustration alone never produces anything. Even the smallest bit of progress is still progress, and when that moment of inspiration hits, grab it, hang on by the tips of your fingers and go along for the ride. You can make up hours at work, reschedule social obligations, and postpone a great many things in life (I’m looking at you, giant pile of laundry. I swear I’ll get to you soon…), but you can’t reschedule ideas when they hit. When the concept hits, when it overwhelms all your other thoughts, get to the nearest writing implements and just write – it’s not always true but generally speaking, life can wait and inspiration never does.