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.
"We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -Oscar Wilde
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
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