To my readers – a number I could count on a couple of hands – I’m sorry. It’s been a while. You subscribed, in good faith, to a person who implied she would produce words on a semi-regular basis, and instead you’ve been met with silence, intertwined with the occasional “like” or “restack” I leave on other people’s posts to prove I’m still here and still, technically, a writer.
I would love to tell you I’ve been busy with something important. The truth is, busy is my baseline. I have writer’s block, and I’ve spent more time thinking about it than it would have taken to simply write through it. So, in lieu of an actual article, please accept this list of reasons I have not written said article.
The first is that I have been researching. This is what I call it when I read four articles, doom scroll a bit, open nine more tabs, and close my laptop. Research is the respectable cousin of procrastination. Nobody can be mad at you for researching. I have read so much this month that I have nothing to say.
The second is my dog. I don’t have anything further to add here, but in the depths of winter he curls up to me on the couch at the exact moment inspiration strikes and my laptop isn’t in reach. I have chosen to read this as the universe telling me the article wasn’t ready anyway. Who am I to argue with a dog?
The third is the tyranny of a good first sentence. I have several. What I don’t have is a second sentence to put after any of them, and so they sit in a huge list in my iPhone notes.
The fourth is that I’m overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content that’s out there right now. At any moment there are pieces being published about the exact thing I was going to say. Every idea I have, I can hear it already existing somewhere, maybe even in better words. Opening my drafts now feels like opening the Tupperware drawer (a cluttered mess). The right response to this is to WRITE anyway. My response has been to throw out all the Tupperware.
And the fifth reason, and this is probably the most honest one, is that writing means deciding what you actually think, and deciding what you think is frightening in a way that reading and researching and cuddling your dog are not. It’s much safer to remain a person who is about to write than to become a person who has written something and now has to stand by it.
So here we are - an article about not writing an article, which is the writing equivalent of turning up to dinner party with a photo of an unbaked cake.
This will have to do for now. Normal service, whatever that was, resumes shortly.
Any and all tips for writer’s block are welcome.