Writers write!

I am going to write a few words today, even if it kills me. Yesterday I was reading my friend Sarah’s wonderfully written and brutally honest blog about motherhood and marriage (Quality-of-light.blogspot.com), and was shamed to realize how little I write in my blog, especially considering I don’t have a child or husband to distract me.

It’s shameful to think how little I write at all, really. I studied creative writing in college (both fiction and non-fiction), worked as a writer for a little while, aspired to write novels and articles and children’s stories, and still, at 35, have not produced anything that I wasn’t contracted to write on deadline.

I think about writing a lot. I outline articles and novels and short stories in my head, and occasionally even on paper. I sometimes even write a few paragraphs. But I complete nothing.

I also start a lot of sentences with “I.”

I remember being given an assignment in elementary school, in which we had to write 10 sentences, or something similar. Every single one of my sentences started with “I.” My teacher (Mrs. Bowlus, a family friend to this day, actually) gently suggested I try mixing things up a bit, try starting some sentences with a word other than “I.” I think I did then, but apparently the lesson didn’t stick.

Or, possibly, when I sit down to write after a hiatus of any length, I revert, blindly almost, to that early, solipsistic mode of writing. Maybe writing really is a practice, as every book about writing and every writing instructor will tell you, and in not practicing it enough, I get rusty, and do this, spew out nothing but “I” sentences.

Once I get going, I really enjoy writing. It’s like exercise—you know it will make you feel great when all is said and done, but it’s so hard to motivate to do it in the first place. Perversely, it feels more fun to procrastinate. To lie on the couch, clean the bathroom, run an errand. But when I really do it, when I write something coherent and cohesive, I feel great.

And yet so often I choose not to. What is up with that?

I have a few writerly friends, a woman who was once an aunt by marriage, and some friends from my publishing days, who all claim to feel completely relieved because they gave themselves permission to no longer feel compelled to write. All of them have published works of varying lengths and/or are/were successful editors. All of them are talented and ambitious. Yet they all say they felt a huge weight was lifted when they decided to allow themselves to stop feeling guilty about not writing. I’ve tried to do the same thing. But I suspect that they, like me, probably still have that niggling feeling in the back of their minds, come a lazy Sunday afternoon or free evening, that there is some task they are avoiding. It’s probably a bit like dropping out of school—it feels great at the time to let go of all the responsibility, but deep down you kind of know you’ve copped out.