Why am I not writing anything? Well the simple answer is all I can think to write about is my not writing and who cares about that? Even other writers can’t stand that kind of self-serving drivel.
I want to be writing about things that are amusing or intriguing or at least engaging in one sort of meaningful way. I could ramble on about my daily activities or dreams or just random thoughts as many do I suppose. But that too becomes disengaging, so there. Stare at these blank pages awhile and see what YOU come up with.
If you’re not a writer yourself, maybe you are a reader. I know what that’s like. If this starts to either put you to sleep, bore you or otherwise not click, forget it. So, that’s why I’m not writing anything right now. Or, at least it is my current excuse.
I put my artwork, my painting on hold for awhile after not being able to make any sales of late. I thought that writing felt like a good alternative outlet and actually got into writing some poetry and short essays for awhile. Like so many things I’ve tried, the work of it became just that — work.
To me creative acts are most exciting in the energetic concept development stage. With painting, or writing that’s the mental/spiritual/physical acts of putting down the flow of words or colors/shapes. After that comes the rendering, mounting and framing or with words, the editing and composing. It’s that second part in writing that can for me be what kills the project. With painting, that second crafting stage is more physical than editing words. Yes of course removing a word is “physical” but it is done with only my fingers on a keyboard or on paper with a line or erasure — too simple yet so difficult. I love the physical rendering of visual arts like painting, sculpture and the like — but words, hmmm; maybe it’s just bad memories of school or something.
Then too, I’ve noticed lately a disdain for most poetry. How can that be since I found that writing poetry felt so right for me as a means of expression? Now I can’t stand to see so many overused similes, so many fruity ways to express something ordinary pouring into my mind from all kinds of sources mostly from academically ensconced professional hacks churning out a constant stream of carefully crafted whining fluff, gagh!
So who am I to judge these “Masters”? Well for one, I am a reader and one who has a low threshold for bullshit. I am a “writer”, whatever that connotes, open to criticism and anything else my readers might throw at me, like plaudits and money and looks askance and, who simply wants things to be simply and clearly stated with soul rather than some prescribed decorative phrasing. I love a good pun now and then but, like most, have been overloaded on that front by those enduringly clever journalists and there cute headlines.
Now I’m the one rambling and being irrelevantly boring. Maybe I’m just giving myself another session of self-learning out in the open — the one where I figure out something like how to appreciate the process of editing to simplify my writing and make sure it doesn’t fit the loathed categories I described here — how to cut the fluff and keep the rough bone, blood and gristle. Enough.
Stay tuned.