I said I was going to post finished work to this blog once a week. I haven’t posted in going on three weeks now. Perhaps a global pandemic is a good excuse? In truth, I’ve spent the better part of the last few weeks inside my house with nothing to do but feed and clean myself and my cats. You’d think that I’d have gotten some writing done. Isolation, quarantine, social distancing – whatever you want to call it, seems like a writer’s blessing. After all, isn’t what we always wanted? Time. Guilt-free time. The better part of the globe is shut down currently. There is no where to go, nothing to see and no one to meet. This should be our finest hour as writers. We should emerge in several weeks with novels, manuscripts and pounds of poetry and prose.
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t written a single thing.
Sure, I’ve journaled, and drafted the start to a short story, outlined a few more, but nothing concrete. I’ve been bidding the time, justifying the lack of writing with a focus on cooking and reading. I’m almost done with Frank Herbert’s DUNE and I’m thrilled at that. Its been years since I read a book in its entirety outside of school. I’ve been stretching my reading muscles, pushing my stamina and endurance so I do not fatigue as quickly while reading.
Yet writing remains the hurdle. I heard a piece of advice in a podcast a couple weeks ago. They were talking about building healthy habits and the most effective manner to go about it. The guest expert recommended that people just “open the book.” Rather than deciding to read twenty pages, a chapter or whatever, just open the book. Read a word, a line, a page whatever you can. Books don’t have to be read in chapter blocks, they can be read a page at a time. Don’t save thirty minutes at the end of the day to read, read while you wait for your food to finish cooking. Just pick up the book and open it. If you do that every day, you’ll eventually finish the book.
Its simple, but effective. So why not do the same with writing? Why not just open the laptop, open my journal, open the blog- shouldn’t it be that easy? Maybe it is. It in moments like this that writing feels like a mental illness. If someone was this conflicted about riding a bike or watching football you’d try and have them committed. Like an illness I don’t feel that I volunteered to be a writer, it feels thrust upon me, diagnosed by the descriptions of my disposition and behaviors. I am ill-prepared, out of my element and asked to accomplish a task that seems beyond me.
But I did this. I wrote this and I will post this, and it will be a small victory but a victory, nonetheless. I shall start with a word, a line, a page.
Voce Mea 