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!

Stress, Stress, Stress...

I've been stressed at work lately... so stressed that it's awfully hard to detach from the work and live outside in the world.  And stress, as so many of us knows, has no regard for boundaries to begin with.  I truly envy those people who are able to find solace in a hobby or passion that shuts out the stress; it isn't that way for me.  The more I try to find relief, the more persistent the stress seems to become.

I force myself to make time for things that the gurus and TV doctors and real world doctors swear will help.  The trouble is, I really don't want to do any of them.  I joined a gym and exercise, which I hate doing.  I get regular mechanical chair massages at the same gym, my reward for going through the motions and making my body move.  I sketch or color, sometimes, though I've discovered that those "relaxing" coloring pattern books actually stress me out to no end; I fret over staying inside all the lines and getting every detailed hole filled in, and my fingers wind up cramped and my shoulders wind into knots. I go to bed earlier... and earlier... to the point that my ten year old son now to bed after me most nights.  But getting enough sleep is supposed to help, yes?  I pet my cats, which is supposed to lower my blood pressure, but that just reminds me that I don't, sadly, take my dogs out as much as they'd like - which is to say at all, cold-averse weather wimp that I am.

And I try to make time to write.  Ah, time to write.  THAT should be a stress reliever.  That, at least, is one thing I've always been good at - escaping into my own dream worlds, visiting with my imaginary people.

But not now.  Now, the words desert me when it's Time to Write, leaving me staring at the page or screen with a direct line to Writer's Block Superstore on speed dial.  Guilt comes calling - I should be writing; I made this time for writing, and I should be using it - then anxiety - why can't I write?  Will I ever be able to write the way I used to?  To find relief in writing?  WHY CAN'T I WRITE?  Finally shame joins the party, sadistically gleeful - I'm just not disciplined enough to write through this, and other writers are, and that's why THEY get published and I don't.  

It's enough to make a girl wish she didn't have time to write to begin with.

"But You Have All Summer to Write..."

 That's what my well-meaning husband once told me, when I was whining (yes, whining, and I hate doing it as much as I hate to admit that I do it) about not having time to write during the school year.  To my logical spousal unit, there should be no creative angst involved.  During the school year, you teach.  During the summer, you write.  Easy as that.

Only I've got a feeling that any fellow writer out there is either laughing their seats off or clutching a handful of hair and making That Face.

No, dear husband.  That is NOT how it works.  NOT "easy as that." 

He does try.  I love him for that.  Right now, because I've had our wonderful son all day, he's done the bedtime routine so I could take the dogs to the dog park and then come home to write.  Only... I stayed a bit too long at the park, and now that I'm home, I've realized that I haven't updated my blog in a while, and I can't decide what to work on, anyway... two or three fanfics are running around in my head, and I'm feeling moody about not being able to go to the children's writer's conference I really wanted to go to this summer, and I just got a rejection letter (okay, it was a "sorry, you didn't win the contest" letter - close enough).  So here I am.  Whining about not writing, when I really could be doing so.

Sigh.

It's like this... bless Bill Amend, creator of the comic strip Foxtrot, for understanding how it REALLY works.  It starts out like this...

 Only with me, it's "just as soon as she checks her Facebook/ e-mail/ school e-mail/ blog..."  And soon, it becomes this...

I've waited all school year for this moment.  Only during the day, I've got my little guy to keep busy and occupied... I can send him to day care so I can do my "have to support the family" job, but I can't bring myself to send him to day care so I can write.  Why do I feel like a bad mom for even thinking about the latter, but not the former?  Probably because I know that this strip is all too true.

Finally, here I am.  Right now.  'Nuff said.