On Coming Back to Writing

Due to sleeping poorly, I did not in fact get up at 5:30 and do an hour's worth of writing like I had planned. I remember this kind of inertia from before. What's new is that the thinking part of it doesn't just come on in my brain when I want it to. Ideas seem almost just out of reach of thought. I am really wondering if this is what it feels like to try to write on antidepressants. Of course, that's the easy way out. It's possible that I can't find anything to write and can't motivate myself to write because I have nothing new to say and know it.

I sit down and I read good short stories, novels, and they don't inspire me right now. They inspire fear that I can't do this. I see their cleverness and go, "I could never do that." Just four years ago, when I was first starting out, I was ignorant of how hard it could be, and I managed somehow to write a few good stories. I never had a problem with an internal editor. Maybe it was easier then due to the amount of time I had on my hands. But I feel like the older I've gotten, and the more I've learned, the harder it's been.

I struggle with a basic fundamental desire to be someone special, something unique. I want to write like nobody else. But I don't. At best, I am a pastiche of what I read. I don't know that there's any originality in me. My creativity just riffs off of the ideas and thoughts of others.

I should probably just take my own advice and shut up and write. Give myself permission to write crap. I can't know if I have a spark of something special inside me unless I am trying to find it. Maybe it's the fear of not finding one that is keeping me from looking right now. Maybe I'm just lazy. Or maybe, I'm just not cut out for this line of work. I'd give up, but I know that my Dad would be disappointed with me. So I'm going to get through this dry patch somehow.