It had not, I felt, been a good year for writing. The year before had produced better material, in spite of, or perhaps because of Covid restrictions, not that in reality they impacted my life that much, except that suddenly my part-time job was gone, but then the nature of it (in the service industry) had begun to make me feel vulnerable anyway. In a sense, my first lockdown had started a week before the government called it, and perhaps in that 'protected' time that went on and on and on I'd said all I wanted to say or used up all my creative ability, and now, in mid-September 2021, I was growing dissatisfied. The urge to write still very much there, longhand or freehand (in the creative flow) on the keys, and yet something that's impossible to define was not the same.
The changes in seasons affect me, so perhaps - I hoped - it was only that; it would settle, it usually did, once the clocks went back; although until then I might continue to feel uncomfortable at the thought of my work being read. Work that was unpolished, unedited, and flouted, at times, grammatical rules. Work with poorly constructed sentences, because it's all about sound, how it sounds to me personally, and the grammatically correct I often don't like; and with too many commas and semi-colons sprinkled everywhere, and new sentences beginning with And. Work that was neither prose or poetry. Work that chose not to explain anything, that expected a reader to know or if interested to do their own research. Work that said less is better: I have no energy to fill this blank space, and anyway, people's attention spans are shorter; therefore, my pieces will reflect that.
Reflect that they had, and still do. They said only what they needed to say and then stopped, instead of, as I would have done in the past, drawn them out, until the white space crawled with black words. I had, I felt, explained too much; and now I could afford to be more condensed, more abstracted. I shifted, it is true, with some difficulty to this new perspective, and entered – I think on reflection - a new exploratory writing phase; all had been well until this new uneasiness stirred. Stirred at a time, too, when I was in a feverish process of writing twelve pieces (for publication 2023!), all of which had to be a maximum of 250 words. The last, though it was intended to be published eighth, I rewrote three times, which for me is unusual, and I was still, though through editing it met the criteria, unhappy with what was to be the final version.
Through it all the uneasiness tugged, like a form of self-doubt or self-consciousness. As I type this, freehand, it's even now tugging away, causing me every now and again to pause, hands clasped almost in prayer before the keyboard, lips pressed to the thumbs. I don't want not to write, but do I want some of what I write to be read? It's no good, no good at all. I'm not a writer. Yet writing a journal on its own I know won't be (though it used to be) enough. If there's no purpose, other than my own selfish need, I might stop, which I don't think would be wise for a mind whose thoughts circle ceaselessly and build, layer upon layer, unless released and set down on physical or digital paper.
This writerly crisis must, it has to, pass.
Picture credit: Robinson Crusoe illustration, 1920, N. C. Wyeth (source: WikiArt).
Written September 2021.
