It’s been kind of a difficult year for me, for no particular reason. Just sometimes life is harder to handle, y’know? Kind of like a common cold of the psyche, I suppose. There are family stresses that I could blame it on, but that’s not really the cause. I just haven’t been coping as well. Maybe more on that later.
I’ve managed to keep going. Art class, lots of music events, golf league, training for and then going on a week-long wilderness canoe trip in Canada, cruise vacation through Alaska, Japan, Korea, and China, Christmas with family here and in Germany, and lots of other fun stuff. My weight continues down, I’m fitter than I’ve been for a long time, and my blood sugar remains stable. The kids are all doing fine. Problems with my big toes, but compared to the stuff many of my friends are going through with hips and knees and backs, it’s nothing.
But when I sit down to write, it’s just–well, truthfully, I don’t usually sit down, or if I do, I read or crochet or play video games. There are words and ideas waiting. I just don’t want to write them down. I’ve had constipation of the creative process before, and this isn’t it. I thought maybe the family stress had drained me more than I thought, and gave myself the summer off, but I’m no closer to writing now than I was in May. The peer pressure and support of National Novel Writing Month let me push through most of a new draft, but since then, not much.
Truthfully, I’m scared, and that’s not something that has happened to me very often. I’ve had specific projects I’ve been afraid to tackle due to the emotional difficulty of the story itself (Michael’s unfinished story comes to mind), but most of the time, words have been my refuge and comfort. But now they’re a threat.
I don’t know what the threat is. I don’t know what I’m afraid of.
I know, I know. Sit down and write anyway. No other way around. Draft will be finished!
Hugs. Reread Keyes?
But hooray for all the fun trips and the weight going down! That’s awesome!
Yeah, in a lot of ways it was a really awesome year. I need to focus more on that.
I don’t have Keyes on my list but maybe I should. I’ve got Bonni Goldberg, Julia Cameron, and Victoria Nelson, though.
Might be time to break out the heavy artillery and reread Brenda Ueland (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KKTNBUG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)
And another book added to the TBR queue…
I would offer to loan you my copy, but I gave it to Chris a couple of years back when we were purging “stuff” to put the house on the market. I guess I’ll have to get a new copy myself.
It’s the most wonderful book, kind and encouraging.
I meant that I looked at it and it’s already sitting in my Kindle app. 😀
A lot of that is great news, but I do understand how it feels when the words won’t come. Maybe just write random stuff? Don’t push yourself to hold a story together. Just stream of consciousness? Either you can find something in it or your mind just might get bored enough to start cooperating.
Already been through all of that, Mar…
Sigh. Well, good luck figuring it out. I find whenever I learn a solid solution, it stops working shortly there after :p.
Ain’t that the truth :p
It’s like I’m in a constant battle to trick myself into doing what I want to do anyway.