It’s Day 106 of not having written.
The other day, after reading, I tried and just grew frustrated. I placed my fingertips on the keys and made a funny expression into the screen where my reflection tried mocking me. I thought, How am I supposed to feel reading something like that and trying to write something like this?!
Maybe my source of inspiration has let me down or has reached its expired date. Maybe this one no longer speaks to me. Maybe it’s too close to home, or I have to live it out further.
I oscillate between aspiring to writers like Bonnaffons or Murakami and envying them.
There is no progression in comfort and I’ll write anyway, trusting the process, hoping it will result in anything. They say to just write. “Write, Viola…Just write, dazzle it up later.” Fine, I will. Then sometimes I won’t allow myself to, as though I owe myself this moment. If I’m not awakened, electrified in some way, then what good is the moment but a carbon copy of yesterday’s attempt? Sometimes, I don’t believe in producing something just for the sake of producing; it is simply not enough. Not if it won’t speak to me.
So, I’ll go back to reading, probably serving as some kind of crutch to mitigate the ebbs and flows or stare wistfully at the baby bouncer thinking how quickly my son outgrew it.
I’ve come to acknowledge and appreciate moments of reset and reflection, resting and ruminating. Like a period of psychological cleansing, emptying the toxins from its receptacle to reorient myself, to regain back some creativity that always makes a return, although tardy or in the shower.
Those moments are especially important, right? There are times of productivity and triumph and moments of dicking around, Netflix, pantsless and feelings overstaying their welcome.
Sometimes the journey takes you only as far as your seat. Sometimes words make a detour from your mind and onto a blog post rather than into your WIP.
