I Used To . . .
I used to write every single day. I would get up every morning with a need, a desire to write. . . anything. Even if I wasn't feeling particularly creative, I would leaf through this huge Collegiate Dictionary that my mom had given me and wherever it would open to I could find some word that I could think about and write about for hours on end.
When did that change? Maybe as I got older and my agoraphobia became so overpowering, so imprisoning, that I began to believe that nothing made any difference. So, I would get up and read all day, hundreds of pages a day, without writing even one sentence.
It made no sense for me to write because none of it would ever see the light of day, so why bother. I read books about how to write, about style and language and setting and . . . everything ever written about the written word and how to write it. Some of it I understood and agreed with, but much of it left me cold. I could never make it all fit together enough to make me think "Hey, I can do that. I can make that work in my life, for my life. That is what I want to do."
Maybe it was because I was so alone. I don't really know. Maybe it was because I had always found ways to do things in my own way, in my own time. I never learned to do things the same way someone else did.
I'm trying to write, again. I want to fill my life with words. I want to make this site and this blog be about words: my words, other peoples words, any words, all words. I want to do this, but I have to do it the way I do things, in my own way. I have to do it and not be afraid.
I'm fighting the fear. I'm writing a little more every day. I will do this. I have to do this.
