Why aren't you writing anymore?

-
I have been asked that question a couple times lately, and I have struggled to come up with an answer. This is the best I could do.
When a writer stops writing, it's because she's living. When she stops writing, it's because the story is still being written. The story may be joyful, it may be painful, it may be confusing or unclear...and if she writes it while she feels it, the story, HER story, doesn't get the credit it deserves. It's tainted with the current pain or joy; it may feel therapeutic but it's not healing. In the past, I may have identified some have of these circumstances as writer's block but now I know it was just...life, and a lesson I needed to learn: listen first, speak (write) later.

One of my favorite writers said "make sure you share from your scars, not your open wounds." Some things are too raw for me to be an author right now. And I've needed to learn how to just be still...just be.  I needed to learn the difference between writing as a coping mechanism and writing as a gift. So when I write again, it will be as a gift, to tell a story - the full, healed, scarred and lived story...not the raw, band-aided, selfish one.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What a non-running wogger thinks when they attempt to run

-
Wogger = jogger+walker. Heavy on the walk, in this case. What pops into my head when I "run"? (Heavy on the quotation marks there, too.) Ok, you can do this. One foot in front of the other. Just, a little faster than you were going.  Pretend there are donuts being held in front of your nose. No, cookies. Fresh chocolate chip cookies. There ya go. You're running. And by running I mean I could walk briskly faster than this, but minor detail. I wonder if they make sports bras for my butt. It's bouncing just as much as my boobs. It feels like there's a lot of stretching going on. Does the bouncing create (more) stretch marks? Probably. Because, science. I can't breathe. I'm going to have an asthma attack. Except I don't have asthma. Or do I? They discovered my brother's asthma when he was playing sports outside in the cold. Maybe I do have asthma. What will happen to my kids in the stroller if I collapse? I should stop and walk, just for a...
Read more

What happened?

-
“Do you mind if I ask…what happened?” Her face showed genuine concern as she asked a question I wasn’t sure I could answer for myself, let alone to a mom of one of my daughter’s friends on a school playground while we stood under our children on the monkey bars.   Six months after my divorce I started to realize no one else was going to tell people for me that I had gotten a divorce. No one else would provide excuses for my children’s age appropriate behavior for what was happening in their world, no one else was going to shield questions as to why I changed my last name on Facebook, no one was going to step in when someone who didn’t know that I didn’t have a husband asked me how my husband was doing or where he was working. It is not their fault for asking, and in most cases their concern was genuine. They loved and cared about me, and they were concerned for me. But they were also worried about themselves.   It was after a long conversation with a loved one that followed th...
Read more

Is there life outside of old nursing bras?

-
I've been having lots of these mom moments lately. Not the cutesy ones with the perfect memories with my kids. I actually have been having lots of those lately too, which is nice because it makes the crazy mom moments not as hard. It's a lot more difficult to be mad at my 2 year old when she poops on my hand when its after she's made me laugh hysterically rather than after she's stayed awake and hyper on a cross country flight. But those moments where you wonder if this is all you are anymore...a mom. And when I say it like that, it sounds bad, right? Because being a parent is THE most important job in the world, and incredible, and a gift...which makes you then feel guilty (MOM GUILT IS THE MOST REAL THING EVER IN LIFE, EVER) for questioning it. But.  The other day I was folding laundry and I realized the nicest and sexiest underwear I own are my new Thinx PERIOD PANTIES. Period fucking panties. I mean yeah, there's lace on them and they're black. They do...
Read more