I Have Forgotten How to Write

Hello 

Sorry I missed last month. I had just moved and still didn’t have the interwebs available to me. But now I am back slowly getting things settled here in my new home. I even have an office now, though it currents is a staging ground for boxes that need to be broken down.

I really wasn’t sure what I was going to write about at first, but then it hit him. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Like a thousand computer keyboards sitting there in silence and eyes looking at a flashing cursor with no letters being typed to create words.  

But before I being I have to say a lot has happened to me over the course of the past couple of months; both good and bad

New job

Moving

Moving in together with girlfriend

One of my closest and dearest friends died

Another person I know died

A good friend had a massive stroke and will never be the same again

Gallifrey Pirate Radio is consuming more and more of my time

I discovered I can make art

I have another round of conventions coming up

But all of this caused me to stop writing. It put a foot on all the creative writing juices, the gas tank is on empty. And I am not talking day to day writing, but fiction writing. The thing I loved to do. The thing I couldn’t imagine myself not doing. It is no more. It gone. Vanished…  

Right now I am sitting on a novel that has interested in it. It is on its final draft.

I have novel that is needs a lot of work, but it is good. It is one of the things I was writing on that I was quite happy with. There was just something there that was rocking and rolling for me. I felt the magic in the words.

There are also a handful of other projects just sitting there looking at me in the face, wanting, begging for me to write… But I can’t do it.

I am not sure why.

Is it writer’s block? I don’t think so. Writer’s block is easy to work through. I have done that many a times.

Am I finally scared at succeeding? Maybe a little… but no. I have already succeeded. I have been paid for what I write. I am not a New York Times bestselling author, but I am making money, mostly fun money, out of writing.

What I think it is; I have just forgotten how to write. Or the way I use to write. And I am not going to lie. I do think life in general got in the way of my writing and it got me so out of practice or the routine I was in that I lost my grove.

I know I am not the only person (I don’t think I can all myself a writer at the moment) that this has happened to and I will not be the last.

So things I am doing to help overcome my life block with writing and getting the grove back that I lost.

-Starting of small. I am not trying to do a lot at first. I am trying to edit at least one sentence a day. This might sound silly, but if I do one sentence that sentence might lead to a second sentence and maybe a third… Who knows? That was how I use to write one sentence at a time to see where it would lead me. I am just trying to get back into the habit of sitting in front of the computer and creating worlds of words.

-I am not beating myself up if I only edit one sentence or write one sentence. I need to get comfortable with the craft of writing again, while still doing art and video. I am a very busy person and it will take some time manage everything going on in my life now. So I am giving myself the chance to figure that out.

-I have reached out to the community of writers that I know and they have been wonderful. So I am not afraid to ask for help when I need to ask for help, now that I am in an area where I know lots of wonderful writers, who are inviting me out to local writer groups and meet ups. I am really looking for to heading out to one of them to try to re-energize.

-I am trying to write during the times of the day that I use to give to and into writing. There were magical times in the day when I just wrote and I am trying to give those times a day a chance reignite that fire within. Trying to recapture the familiar and the past in the present.

- I am not giving up. I have to work past the doubt that exists in my head and keep moving forward. I have to prove to myself that I can still do this writing thing, because I know that I can and will.

So what I am trying to say is don’t beat yourself up if hit that wall and feel lost in writing or not writing. There is always hope. You might have to take baby steps write a few words, then sentences, then paragraphs. Just don’t beat yourself up that will only make things worse.