A complainer, Gentle Reader? Is that what I’ve become? I feel like all I do on this blog is complain about not writing, so instead, I am going to write on this blog, trying to get some words knocked loose of the cobwebs in my brain. I know the longer I go without writing, the harder it gets. Writing, like practicing a musical instrument, is about memory muscle: hands on keyboard, pen to paper, write write writing away.
Instead of writing, I have been staring at blank pages, and I’ve tried everything short of standing on my head. But I know the problem. See, I’m supposed to be rewriting my YA novel right now. Instead, I feel daunted by the prospect of rewriting, normally, my favorite activity. Sometimes, I enjoy rewriting more than I enjoy writing itself. There is something soothing about it, beautiful in its complexity. You take a thing, and remake a thing, so that it is, in the end, two things you recognize (how my students would chastise me for using the word “thing,” a word I urge them never to use in writing!) but neither and both at once.
My first story that I remember writing was in third grade. I wrote about a girl who suffered Werewolfitis, and let me tell you, EVERYONE on the bus that day loved my story. The thrill of it, of others reading the words I had written and commenting on it, I knew then, I had to be a writer.
I’ve changed more than a bit since that eight-year-old child first set pen to paper, and I’ve changed the most in my need for accolades. Now, I want to please myself. And that’s not possible. Not without words.
BICHOK, friends. BICHOK, BICHOK, BICHOK.
The Postmodern Bluestocking 