One of the lies I tell myself regularly is that I’m a writer. Only I haven’t written fiction in months, and I haven’t edited any of the work I have written, and I haven’t submitted anything for a long time, either. So can I call myself a writer anymore?
I have several non-personal writing assignments. I have to draft a letter of introduction for our Parish Profile that will go through the grindstone of editing by committee. I am doing this on a spared space and prefaced with “I AM HAVING A HARD TIME WORDING” and it struck me just how true that is. I don’t write every day anymore.
I also have to write a script for our upcoming Broadway Night review and I’m really struggling with it. I won’t be presenting the script, so even the bits I have that are full of my voice are going to be interpreted by two other people.
One of the Stoic practices is to keep a journal, and if I can even find my latest quotidian journal I’m sure it’s been several weeks since I’ve written in it. This is a task I leave for the fountain pen. I don’t let myself type it out. I don’t think I’ve made a single entry in my Lessons journal since we moved.
Why is writing so damn hard now?
Frankly, the only thing that keeps me from writing is me, and I’m not used to it anymore. One of the gifts of NaNoWriMo is it trains your fingers to take direct dictation from the brain without any editing going on. At least, a good NaNoWriMo does this. I have three or four winner shirts. I’m almost ashamed to wear them these days. The stuff I wrote during those Novembers is still in files and in one case printed out in a box full of handwritten notes, including the dreaded “why don’t you try finishing this chapter as it seems rather important” notes in my own handwriting. It’s a miracle I can even read them.
Practice. That’s the only way forward. Practice writing. Fortunately nobody reads this blog so I’m pretty safe to practice here. I don’t think this is a case of my internal editor telling me every sentence is crap. I don’t think it’s … yeah. I think I’m not doing so well stringing thoughts together. I remember when I started writing when I had an idea I tried not to write it down. If I put a plot point on a notecard I never managed to get it into the draft. I’ve probably got a box of rather witty sentences that would make my stuff salable if I could only find it.
Reading back on this to see if it’s not a complete shambles (which it is, but oh well) I remembered the last creating writing class I took from a professor who thought creative writing was expensive leather journals and fountain pens and putting all your emotions into it and when it was full taking it to the beach and burning it in a moment of catharsis. I was an active member of the Wordos back then and still unsure of myself. I had had one small sale, I think, at that point. As a class she took us to the campus coffee spot for one-on-ones and all she really had to say to me was “Josh, you are a writer”. She said this with conviction. She even put a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t laugh in her face but I wanted to. Then I went back to the table I was sharing with some classmates and continued to talk to them about what I knew of the writing life, which admittedly wasn’t much but the other students said they had learned more from me in one afternoon than in weeks of this class.
I think I may be bitter about that. Maybe not. It was a bit of a joke to me in the end. We spent the last class session doing a read through of our work and I decided to pull out of my bag the one issue of Aoife’s Kiss that contained my story The Simple Life. My name wasn’t on the cover, but I was on the TOC and that counts for something to me. (I went looking for a link to the story and remembered I don’t have it up on Smashwords because I don’t have a cover for it.) Maybe I was just showing off. I tend to do that, despite being told time and time again that it’s simply not cool.
So perhaps with more practice I can grease the wheels of writing and maybe it won’t be so hard. I’ve written too much in PowerPoint for work, which isn’t good for my soul or my grammar.