Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Forced

Why can't I just write like me? That's all I want to do in this moment, but I am instead finding myself incapable. The writing sounds off or foreign. It sounds like attempts at being someone I'm not.

I had a voice once, or so I was told. Professors, confidants, and my wife have all identified it at one point or another. It was mine. Leave it to me, the guy who couldn't detect it in the first place, to go and lose it.

I've been away from writing for too long. So many plans were made in the last few months, plans to redirect my path toward something more profitable and bearable as a future career. Plans to do anything other than write.

I was writing. Eventually I discovered that writing wasn't something I could continue. I became afraid of it. Too afraid to try, apparently. So, here I am, a clock-punching stooge like a majority of people in the world. I've turned my back on the last year of half-hearted attempts and failure of self.

I still have ideas. There are pages and pages of notes and fragments detailing potential  stories, comics, plays, movies, etcetera. All of it is going to sit there, now because of avoidance begotten by dread. Why?

I'm going to try and break through. I don't know if this will work.

This is all I could get out tonight. Maybe I'll manage more some other time.

2 comments:

  1. Hang in there, friend. Writing is always hard. I've taken a step back from it as well over the last little while so I totally relate to how you're feeling.

    The important thing is to just.keep.writing. Even if you think it's shit - it doesn't matter because you're writing and creating art as only you can make it. Find ways to be inspired - Neil Gaiman usually works for me, and his Make Good Art speech, and AFP's speech where she mentions the Fraud Police.

    Hang in there. Keep writing. We're all in this together.

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  2. Thank you very much.

    Now to rededicate myself to the mantra "Make good art" and to remember the spirit of Gaiman's message. Good, bad, blurbs, or essays, they just have to keep outputting, no matter what. Our inner writing monkeys, that is.

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