here i am again. starbucks, at lunchtime, trying to squeeze in just 30 minutes of writing. i started a new writing class last week, and he implored us to spend at least 30 days writing. more, if we could, but at least 30 days. it sounded so attainable and i was appropriately inspired.
and yet, here i am again. circling the same drain. i bore myself. i know the tricks (butt in chair, write shitty drafts,the more you write the better you get, write what you know, write to find out what you know, write what you don’t know, make everything up). I know what to do. i even know what my problem is.
and still. i cannot get out of my damn way. i am not afraid of failure, or i don’t think. no one is reading this, or has to. i have seven different stories open on my computer. just pick one, i tell myself. but i can’t get there, into that character. how do i make myself care? and why will anyone else care?
my problem is that i’m not writing authentically. from the heart. through the fear. whatever you call it, i am not doing it. and i know i’m not doing it. and i don’t know how to get through it, or around it. it’s that intuition that you just know is the truest voice you have telling you: cut out the bullshit. just write what YOU want. this is not fear of failure, or being stopped at the borders by my inner critic, or writers block or procrastination. i don’t have my own voice. i don’t believe in my characters yet. i don’t know how to find my story, my voice.
weirdly i do believe in myself as a writer. i do think that i have what it “takes”- at least a small amount of talent, the desire, the willingness to put in the hours and slog through. i just can’t get out of my own way.
my new teacher is intense. capital I. one of the first things he had us do was take out a piece of paper and write down three things we are ashamed of, three things we would never tell a soul. one i had instantly. took me awhile to come up with more. but i wrote them in code. no one reading the paper could decipher my secrets.
then he had us pass them around so everyone had someone else’s (anonymously). and we were to write about the other’s secret fear.
vulnerability. maybe that is what i’m missing. my secret fear? that i have nothing interesting to say. that i can write beautiful sentences, and quirky characters and funny lines, that i can draw you in and establish POV and pacing and do all the right things but still, you will be bored. you will think, so what?
i am not aiming for so what. and of course, i know the answer to my own quandary. there is no answer. the only way around this problem is through it. writing through it. writing my boredom away, writing pages and pages of boring things until I find the one sentence that isn’t.
i know this. and yet, here I sit.
This post is written as a link-up to The Extraordinary Ordinary’s JustWrite series, an exercise in free writing. Check it out, and link up!
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