I want to be a writer.

I've been itching to write again, but the more I read the more I think I don't have anything to say. There's been so many things already said by writers who are much more elequont than me. My writing style is not unique and I do not have a voice of my own.

I've sat down with a blank screen and a blank piece of paper a few times now: each time I've just stared. It's amazing how small and insignificant I feel everytime I get an urge to just write. I feel like everything inside is stuck and there is no way to get it out on paper.

What's weird is that every time I'm in a writing phase, it has something to do with love or pain. When I'm not there I hear Rilke telling me to stay away from the subject of love. I wonder why I don't hear him when I'm in that stage. Perhaps because it's my vice, my addiction. It's been awhile though. The last time I was able to write more than one poem in a sitting was more than two years ago. I used to write because I had to: there was no way around it. I was blogging and poeming everyday. Those were not particularly good times.

And, so, when I say that I want to start writing again, I scare myself. I don't want to write because I'm depressed, and I don't want to be depressed to write. I've been in both places, and I strongly believe that real work is beyond that stuff. The real work comes many years later, after the pain, and it isn't because you have a wound, but maybe because you have a scar, or even a memory. And, in the end, the work shouldn't really be about the memory. The work really should just use those things to say substantial things, ever-lasting things.

I guess I'm not there yet because I still don't know what I want to say. I just know that I need to say something real. I want to be moved when I write it and I want the reader to be moved to read it. I want to grow up, but I'm better off letting it happen to me.

I'm sure that you feel the same way. Thanks for the ear.