Blessing or Curse?

I just read a great article that someone posted on Facebook by literary agent Steve Laube. Go here and take a peek. It talks about the doubts of a writer. Ever been there? If you've written anything in you life, from a thank you note to a novel, I'll bet you have.

Tonight, I am feeling melancholy. Why? Because I've been so unproductive with my writing these past few days. I've started projects I had every intention of completing, but there is a hesitancy that holds me back. I've promised a couple of people that I would do blog interviews with them, and I can't even think of decent questions to ask.

Steve entitled his piece "The Curse of the Writer", and he is so right. A blessing to be able to put words on paper when they flow right, a curse when they stay bottled up inside. Tonight, words remind me of a crowd of people leaving a large area all at once and trying to squeeze out a narrow exit door. Everybody expends their energy to get free, but nobody gets anywhere. Progress stops as people trickle out of the door one or two at a time.

Phrases filled with power vie for attention in my brain, but something has them all jumbled up in a mess. They try to force their way out in random order, so nothing that appears on paper makes any sense.

Writing is a lonely business. Steve talks about that too. Reminds me of a piece I wrote a long time ago. I'll share it here.

Loneliness touches each of us at one time or another. There is the emptiness of love lost and love betrayed, the sorrow of death or absence of a friend, the abandonment of an elderly person by family members, the frustration of being misunderstood by others. Most desolate of all, perhaps, is the loneliness of hopes and dreams not yet realized. My loneliness stems from the desire for creative self-expression.

This desire, like a hunger deep in my heart, demands satisfaction. It burns in me constantly, so intense that it simulates physical pain. It is a thirst that parches my soul and craves gratification. It leaves me with a sense of discontent, restlessness, and dissatisfaction with the other aspects of my life.

The dissatisfaction is of my own making. I’ve been granted free will. I make my own choices. I stare at a blank piece of paper and I have the ability to cover it with words what will communicate meaning. I hold the key that will unlock my deepest emotions and allow them to flow in some constructive form. Yet, I question what I want to write, to whom, and why.

The question of why is the most complex. Why I have a drive to express my perceptions, my beliefs, my feelings on paper is not easily explained. Maybe it is a God-given gift to be employed toward positive change in some other human being. Possibly it is a part of the genetic structure that is me. Perhaps it is a means of escape from all that is painful and all that is real.

The necessity to escape leads me to a fantasy of hopes and dreams that only I can understand. It is a region as yet unexplored, uncharted, undefined, without form or boundary. It is a world that even those I love cannot share, for it is a product of my imagination.

Imagination removes me from reality and I lose touch with those around me. I withdraw into a world of my own and become more and more isolated. I conceal myself in a cocoon that yearns for transformation. Desperately, I struggle to find words to place on the page that will someday free me from the prison of my loneliness.

Maybe tomorrow I will feel better.

Maybe tomorrow I will be able to create something worthwhile.

Maybe tomorrow I won't feel so sad.

Maybe tomorrow I will be able to think of something positive I have done.

Maybe tomorrow I won't dwell on all the things I need to do that I haven't done.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Am I A Writer or Not?

Greetings and welcome to the porch. There is a lovely breeze flowing through the screens today, which ignites the hope in my heart that the summer heart is waning and we are on the cusp of autumn weather.

Every month, I try to remember to change the thought for the month on my sidebar. Sometimes I forget all about it and two or three months go by with the same quote. I wonder if anyone notices!

Today's quote is from a French poet, essayist and editor by the name of Charles Peguy. He lived a short life, born in 1873 and passing from this life in 1914, which means he was a lot younger when he died than I am now. I probably never read a word the man wrote until today, when I was scouring the Internet for a suitable quote. This one caught my eye because it suits the mood I am in right now. "A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket."

Sometimes I feel like every word I try to put on paper requires hours of thought, consternation, and discontent. The ideas are there, but when they come out on the paper, they remind me of those water color paints i used to play with as a kid. The paints looked so vibrant and bright in the paint box, but once on paper, they are watered down and only a dull shadow of the original hue.

I marvel at people who can whip out a blog post in a few minutes, a magazine article in a couple of hours, and a novel in four months. Sentence structure, spelling, and grammar come easy to me, but when I try to put it all in some order that makes sense to the reader, I find myself agonizing over every thought.

When I attended the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Conference, I made contact with several magazine editors and so many ideas ran through my head as to what I could write for their publications. Now that I am home, the ideas that seemed so clear then are now hazy and faded. It brings to mind the way a dream is so vivid when you first wake up from it, but as the day wears on, the details get dimmer and dimmer.

Maybe, as I've heard said at conferences, I'm not really a writer. Maybe I'm a person who is in love with the idea of being a writer. If I were a real writer, wouldn't the words come a lot more freely than they do?

That takes us right back to the quote I mentioned above. How many of the great writers of past generations and the current day spend hours expending blood, sweat, and tears over their words? I suppose there are others who feel as I do, then there are the lucky ones who sit down and pull the words out of an overcoat pocket.

Let's see, how long has it been since I wore an overcoat???

Thanks for reading my blog!