For many months - nay, a few years, now - I have fantasized about writing. Death, divorce, and a reluctance to let go of said fantasies have kept me at a safe distance from actual creativity. Since 2008, I have done nothing more than pick up long-ignored works in progress and, at the first sign of a challenge, cast them aside a few days later. All it would take was a bad day or even a bad sentence and my manuscript would end up back in the box with the other misfits. Having been hurled there from across the room.
It's obvious: I have been too scared to write.
No, I don't fear failure, because I'm not functioning anywhere near that level yet. I don't have any grand plans for my stories at the moment. What I fear is not knowing what will emerge when I tap into my creativity. I can't even sort through my myriad of emotions these days, so how will I get any emotion on the page? If I manage to get inside a character's head, what will it feel like to do that? I don't know, but it seems pretty obvious to me that it needs to be done.
While I would love to pound out 50,000 words this NaNo, my goal is, instead, humble and simple: write.
Sounds perfect to me! No need to open a vein yet; maybe tap it a little to get it ready. ;)
ReplyDeleteYou've been through so much in the past few years. WHen my family was inundated with deaths and bad stuff, I know at least a couple of members shut everything up inside, and will still refuse to do anything that might make them feel anything , because they are afraid they might explode. It started with my grandmother's illness and death, then with my aunt, and then with all the custody crap with my brother, etc. You might be experiencing something similar, having some grief that has not been dealt with from years ago that is blocking you, and then all this other stuff is building up on top of it! But it is a normal thing, the only thing is that at some point, you'll have to deal with all this stuff before you can move on!
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