It’s really easy to fall out of the practice of writing. If you go a few days, then you try and open up a notebook or a blank word document and just stare at it waiting for something to come to mind. I think one of the greatest causes of writing block is stopping for a day or so. I haven’t written much in months. A little creative use of work email and some stuff for Rabble Rabble Cheeseburger.
I have a lot to write. So much swirling around my head and I just can’t seem to sit down and write it. I have stories, essays, poetry, comics, novels, screenplays, and thoughts to write. I read things and I think, I ought to write! This is so inspirational! Let me just sit here on my phone for a little bit longer and then I will write. Shit! I got to go to bed!
I write one line and I become the stupidest, dumbest, most horrific writer that ever lived. No one will want to read this and if they did, they would wish the worse for me. I write a line, erase the line, write another line, erase the line, write yet another line, and then I erase it and then I run out of time.
It’s really the discipline. I remember after my first bout with cancer I had a lot of cognitive effects from the chemo and I decided I would write a blog post every day. I chose to do a fake meditation of the day to make it somewhat easy, but since I finished the year of that, I haven’t been able to get the discipline back.
I spend so much of my time blaming all the things that get in the way of my creative life. It’s the full-time job, it’s the volunteering I do, I have a social life, I have other responsibilities. I come home from work so beat down that all I want to do is zone out on video games and try to forget the horror that is customer service and then it is time to go to a volunteer gig or meet a friend or hang with the wife or it is literally time to go to bed.
The world is so noisy. It is a storm of information raining uselessness on us. All this information and we have become blacker and whiter than when we thought we had to sacrifice human and animals to gods.
Sometimes I have a great idea for a blog. Oh, man, this will be so funny! I write a few paragraphs and then I realize I am writing a McSweeney rejected story. Sometimes I get ambitious and try to write an essay on culture and politics and end up sounding like a jaded Gen-Xer who is too old to work at Vice. Sometimes I want to be funnier. Sometimes I want to be more real.
Other times I want to be the guy who writes some angry rant slash manifesto that will actually alter the negative direction of our culture and correct it and make the world a better place, but I end up just sounding like an old guy writing a “You Know What Grinds My Gears?” blog.
It’s easy to compare myself to all the other writers who write on the internet. The world is full of writers. Someone once told me that there are two writers for every reader. I’m always surprised when someone has read more than one of my blogs, and I am always stoked even if they don’t seem that into it.
People are very helpful with their criticism. I get emails all the time from strangers telling me all the mistakes I have made and how I should do something better like die. People give me ideas for blogs, like writing about their business of macramé dolphin soap and how it exfoliates and kills the earths most perverted creature.
Sometimes I wish I had an editor to both proofread my work and give me ideas and deadlines. Sometimes I want to team up with someone or people on projects. Sometimes I do and it is great, and other times it is a real struggle. Other times I am happy that this is all mine and no one else’s’ and no one can tell me what to do.
This post itself was a real slugfest. I have almost hit select all delete several times. You don’t want to read this. I don’t know what you actually want to read when coming to this website but reading about how I have a hard time writing seems very unprofessional. I know I am an unpublished writer who flirts with doing what I love before heading back to the safety of mediocrity, but my creative side is out there on the rocks luring me with such beautiful music, but I am staying on the boat.
I’m 42 years old and for a long time I did not see me being this old and now I am at the point that I need to change everything if I’m going to listen to those haunting calls. I want to create.
I have to stop comparing myself to others.
I have to just do it.
I have to ask for help.
I have to be okay with people not liking my work or me.
I have to be like a rock and roll band that plays a show to an empty venue like it was sold out.
I have to be okay with not being perfect.
I have to remember that sometimes the vision is unachievable, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good.
It is good. Your writing sings. If you want to delay writing I suggest reading Angela’s Ashes. The author wrote this when in his 60s. Please write more.