“Mostly dead is slightly alive.” –Miracle Max, The Princess Bride
That line wasn’t said about this blog, but it could have been. It’s been…a while since my last entry. I’ve spent most of my time not writing other things as well as not writing here, so you can see how busy I’ve been. All the thinking about writing, well don’t get me started on how much of that has been going on. Not all of it has been done while staring at the TV.
It turns out that a nearly constant state of dread just wrings the creative juices right out of a guy. This guy anyway. I’ve written down ideas for stories and novels. I’ve edited and re-edited my first novel, as feedback has come in from readers. I’ve worked on outlining a new novel and read countless writing articles via Pinterest. All those things have not resulted in progress on a draft or the finishing of said novel.
Does my feeble word count mean I’m no longer a writer? Does my failure to submit stories to publications mean I’m not serious about being published? Did you know there are hundreds of articles on these two subjects, and I’ve read a great number of them when I should have been writing?
This blog suffers for being lower in my writing priorities than my fiction. It was conceived, by a publisher of mine, as a promotional tool for his magazine. Since I’ve had nothing published since, there has been scant promoting. I’ve filled it instead with documentation of hopes and dreams and the occasional story from my childhood. I even had a guest post about basketball that received more attention than anything I’ve written. (Note to self: develop an interest in sports.) Instead of promising more regular posts, I will promise more of the same sporadic content drops that you have come to know. The blog will cling to life and be here when maybe a chocolate-covered miracle pill will restore it to an impressive vitality.
This is a time when I need to write, perhaps more than I ever have, and yet it’s also a time when writing is extremely difficult for me. It’s a monumental task to focus on much of anything. My brain refuses to turn my imagination into words. This “deer in the headlights” feeling occasionally subsides, only to be replaced with the worry that there’s something more menacing coming down the road, something without the decency to pierce the darkness with its headlights. I can’t remember anything that distracted me this much since 9/11, when all I could do was watch the news and emotionally eat. I know this will pass, at some point, and I’ll get back to writing more regularly. We’ll all get back to whatever this current mess has replaced in our lives.
If you haven’t perused my blog’s archives, I recommend you give them a look. There are entries like the one about my humorous fishing outing with my dad. (Is fishing a sport?) There’s that one about my first kiss and another that’s a love note from my sweet tooth. There are a few about writing, too.
Are you suffering a creative drought due to current events? Are you one of those people who have experienced the opposite? Either way, I’d love to hear your story in the comment section.