Writing, or Wherein I Muse about Not Writing

I am not writing enough, and it saddens me. :( That must all change very soon, though: National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner, and I'm all registered. (Username: thstlenshmrock, if you want to friend me for the project!)

And I have to write a piece for MindSprocket this month after taking off September due to a complete and utter lack of a decent piece of writing. I'm beginning to hit a brick wall as a writer. I'm finding that I have lots of things to say, but not all of them are things I want to share with a wider audience. I'm also not sure how I want to say other things. So I just feel kind of stuck.

Like most things, though, I recognize that I really need to keep pushing forward even though it's difficult. Maybe by slogging through all the things I have to say that aren't quite fit for public consumption I'll work my way to something worth others' time.

I'm also facing the feeling that even if I have things to say, they really aren't worth other people's time. Too self-evident, too narrow in perspective, too lame. Granted, I'm finally beginning to work through my earliest fear that I really didn't have anything at all to say (and that when people were complimenting me, they were just being nice), but there's still a slight paralysis when I sit down, afraid that if I ever had something worthwhile, it's long gone now.

Honestly, who really wants to read about a 23 year-old's world of language, music, friends, spinning, weaving, reading, and writing? Her struggles with friends, family, finances, transportation, love, her niche in the universe? Her faith, her fear, her light, her darkness? I'm beginning to feel like I'm years away from having a stable perspective to share.

As a writer (and often as a person), I feel fickle and changeable, unstable and unsteady. Immature and unripe, and quite possibly without a valid position to speak from.

I stumbled across some of my writing from high school and early college not long ago when I was sorting through some papers in my closet, and marveled at my unwavering sureness of perspective and opinion. I may not have known everything (though sometimes my early tone suggests otherwise!), but I was positive about what I did know, and I had absolutely no problem letting my readers (read: professors and sometimes peers) know that I was 100% certain that I knew exactly what I thought about a particular thing, and oh, by the by, that my position was the right one. Ha!

I've matured (I hope) a good deal from those days, but I'm having trouble finding an honest voice in my writing that says very level-headedly, "This is my experience and this is what I think. Maybe it's like you and maybe it isn't, but I hope you can take something away from it."

I also have this burning, inexplicable desire to write fiction, which I am terrified of. Quite frankly, with a few notable exceptions, I tend to suck at writing fiction. My characters are entirely too like myself and I starting finding them annoying after a while (hmm . . . ). My plots are very thin and boring because I hesitate to step into my character's darker side, into their struggles--into the things that would make them human and not just the one-dimensional beings out of a nineteenth century morality novel. *cough* Not that I have strong opinions about such works, not I.

I hesitate to give them flaws because I am an idealist and I like things to be nice and tidy. If I'm "inventing" people, I want them to be model people rather than real ones. This, of course, makes them boring at best and utterly intolerable at worst.

In other news, I want to go back here:


It was a gorgeous day about a year ago when Ash and Rowan played along the Potomac, as the fall leaves crunched beneath our feet and the wind sang through the trees in harmony with us...

And yes, that's me sitting down fighting with the extension cords.