Valentine Thoughts on Writing

Writing's like love. You want it to be fantastic and all-encompassing, you want to leave your heart on the page, and every now and then you cycle into phases where you do just that. Most of the time, though, you lapse into surfacing. Saying barely what should be said, and flailing at the words you do manage to spill. The time you spend is forced, not desired. It's obligatory, not inspiring.

Writing requires work. It's not this fabelled "gift" people speak of. "Oh, you're a writer. You're so lucky. I wish I could be a writer." Uh-huh. And if wishes were horses, friend.

I have fallen out with writing. I need to rekindle the love affair. Find what it is that drew me to it. Forget about the pressures that I have around me to do it, and rediscover the love I have for being in That Zone when it should oh-so-infrequently make its way to me.

Writing, in many ways, became merely a survival mechanism over the last three years. It's funny, I'm not sure which has shaped me more as a woman, the death of my mother, or the last three years. Both have been hard as hell. Either way, I stand now on the other side.

I don't need writing as a survival mechanism now. What I need is it to be more. I need for me to feel compelled to write. To have words of all kinds bursting beneath my skin. To itch for the clackety-clack of my ideas becoming reality on a screen before me. THAT, I want.

So now I'm at that point where I realize "waiting" for it to happen is resulting in, well, just lots more waiting.

Now, grunt, comes the work. Now comes forcing myself to just sit and spill. Now I guess the writing becomes more about who it is I've become. The question is, who is that? I'm still not really sure.

Funnily, I probably have more sense of self than most, but it's perhaps that very thing that makes me feel so adrift at sea right now. I know myself, have always known myself, so well that I find myself frequently at a loss. Because who I am now feels different -- not just mentally or spiritually, but now physically different -- all the time. Like, last night, sitting down on a crowded bus and realizing my ass wasn't touch either person on my right or left. For the first time in literally decades.

I'm not complaining, no, I'm just confused. I'm different. And I'm still changing. Trying to assess who I am *now* is like measuring the temperature of water on a scorcher of a day at 10am. You could, but in 2 hours it'll be pointless information, won't it? Yet, it's interesting for a time.

That's why this blog has become more a record of me in the moments as I keep shifting towards the new me. Whatever else a blog is, first and foremost it's supposed to be a "web log".

But you know what?

I'm not worried about it. Writing's going to explode for me, it always does. I know I have a lot to say. I'm just not sure what it is right now. The clarity will come. That always does, too.

I am very optimistic about the year ahead. The only thing is, this time I *KNOW* how much I did last year, so I've kind of got that mentality you get after you've climbed a mountain? You KNOW you can do it, but you've NO illusions about how hard it all was.

Heh. I blew my BACK out because I did so much last year. Granted, it's because the hip that caused it was injured a number of years ago and I'd never healed it properly, but still. :) It was a big year.

This year daunts me. It's also egging me on a little, too. It'll be fantastic. So will falling in love with writing again. I'll make it happen.

I always do. :)