I haven’t written a poem in almost a year (gasp). And we all know I haven’t been keeping up with this blog. And the 146 Poems of Love project is chugging along, but if truth be told, when I come home at night after a long day of work, it’s not usually the first thing I feel like delving into…
I’ve been in a real writing rut the last several months, and it’s depressed me a little, and it’s also scared me to death (Am I LOSING it?! If this is what I went to school for, what I decided almost fifteen years ago that I wanted to make my life out of, if this is my dream, the reason I moved to New York City and the thing I’ve told everyone, told myself, is my true love and passion, and now I’m not doing it, and honestly don’t even feel like doing it…then what the hell am I supposed to do now?!?).
I know deep down I’m still in love with writing. And I know it’s still what I want to do…what I’m still going to do (hopefully for a very long time).
It’s just hard. Hard to find the time. Hard to find the energy. Hard to make it a priority. Hard to want to do it when I am surrounded by hundreds of distractions in this city that never sleeps. Hard to believe I can do it when I am surrounded by hundreds of other writers who are really “going somewhere”(and seem to be going there much faster than me).
I’ve spent the last week reading through all my “writing how-to” and “writing inspiration” books, and searching through old notes from lectures I attended on writing...Every book, every lecture, every article of advice says the same thing: Just sit down at the damn desk, and write something. Anything.
I keep trying to find something else, maybe plan or outline a little more, find another way to make this happen, but there isn’t one, is there? I think I really began this whole “career” of writing based out of a feeling and I got caught up in the romance and adventure of it all. But what I’m learning is that writing isn’t about feeling at all. We can write from feeling, or about something we feel passionately about, but if the writing itself was about feeling, I don’t think it would ever happen in the first place. I can count on my fingers the number of times in the past five or six years I have felt like writing. However, the feeling that comes from actually doing it, and the feelings you find yourself expressing through it, and seeing how your writing makes others feel, is what makes it all worth it in the end.
It’s just awfully hard to remember that, when I’m sitting here on a beautiful winter-turned-spring day, with to-do lists a mile long, and dinner to be cooked, and errands to run, and a movie to be watched, and a billion more excuses racing through my head, and my quiet little notebook just sitting there in the corner, empty but calling my name…
