I haven’t written in some time now. I open a file and just stare at the blinking cursor. Nothing is going through my mind. No words to put onto paper, no scene in my head…nothing.
A small part of me thinks that it’s fear that is keeping me from writing. It’s the fear of facing an emotion that I think I have dealt with but sometimes, like right now, realize that maybe I haven’t dealt with at all.
And that fear is facing the feelings of my mother passing away in December. I know I will write about it and already have written about it and channeled some emotions of my own into characters that I already have, but I don’t think I want to face any more of that emotion right now. Maybe I don’t ever want to face it.
I want to write, but right now, I don’t want it bad enough to face a potential black hole of emotion. My last two novels were novels driven by love. Boy-meets-girl stories. I thought maybe that was the genre I was suppose to write it in and that I had found my voice, and if you had asked me in November or even early December of last year, I would have sworn it was the genre I was suppose to write in. Now, I don’t feel that way. Now, I don’t know what to write. I don’t know words to write. I don’t have a story in my head. I have a blank canvas.
This frightens me. I find myself asking “Do I really want to write?” “Do I really need to write?”
I answer yes to both but a voice inside me asks “Are you sure?”
That answer is “No, I’m not sure at all.”
Listening to “Misundercould” by Matthew Ryan
