Words, Come Back!

My words have gone away.

Some people would call it writer's block, but that's not really what it is.  My brain is buzzing with story ideas.  I've got old ideas that are begging me to write them down, new ideas waiting to be born, stories that I drafted ages ago hoping that I'll dust them off and breath some new life into them.

But the words aren't there.

I spent an hour in my drafts file, tweaking a phrase here, a sentence there.  Nothing struck me as ready to be sent out into the world, but I couldn't manage to work up any enthusiasm for improving them.

I spent another thirty minutes staring at a blank document, typing out a few lines and then deleting them, starting and aborting new stories before they could ever make it to revision phase.  Nothing I wrote sounded right, felt right.  Nothing was up to what I consider my usual caliber. 

Of course, at this rate, my usual caliber is getting to be... nothing.  I haven't written anything new in ages.  Even this blog is gathering a pathetic layer of cyber-dust.

I don't know where my words go, in these long spaces between productive writing periods.  I don't know how to get them back.  I've read the advice, most of which boils down to "muscle through it."  Write something, even if it's garbage.  Write anything, just to keep the inner gears cranking.  Write from a prompt, keep a journal, compose reams of bad poetry.  Just write. 

There was a time when I was an avid writer of fan fiction, which served nicely to get me over the dry spells. but lately even that has deserted me; my fandoms are dead, and I haven't found the passion for any new ones.

I don't even have a writer's circle to call upon, to help me through these desolation periods.  No other members of the SCBWI live near me, and the one group I tried to join up with met at a most inconvenient time for someone who needs to hold down a day job.  I didn't stay long enough to form any lasting friendships, and so far I haven't mustered the courage to form a group of my own... that would put me in a position of quasi-authority, and I don't want to be the leader.

And so I sit, and I stew, and I send out a plea into the ether... Words, come back!  Come home!  So much of my self-image, my idea of who I am, is tied up in my identity as a writer that I don't really know who I am without my words.

Sigh.

Words, come back!  I miss you!