I've said it a lot lately. It seems like its made its way into multiple conversations and even more papers, projects, and blog entries for my comm classes. What is this "it"? It is simple: Lately, I have undoubtedly referred to or classified myself as a writer more times than I am sure I even remember. It seems to come up everywhere in reference to who I am - to what defines me. I don't know why I have been doing this so much. I don't usually. Here's my theory as to why. I am trying to convince myself. Maybe if I say it enough times it will be true. Maybe I will magically start writing again. Aside from a play or two, I haven't finished anything in nearly three years (that's just my estimate). And, now that I obviously won't get any younger (I've resigned to that fact), the fact that I haven't finished anything scares the shit out of me.
I feel lost without writing. For the longest time in my youth, my characters were the only friends I had. Thinking of myself as someone who doesn't write, the type of person I'd be then, is frightening. I can't comprehend who that person is, but I know that is not who I want to become. I can't let myself be that person. I don't know that person. In straying from writing, I am losing sight of who I am. That scares me too.
If writing defines who I am so much, why can't I write? It's not something I was ever taught. Sure, I had to learn the rudimentary skills and what not, but I've always been able to put stories and words together, to weave in theme and characterization. To eloquently combine words in a way that inpsires or incites a desired emotion. Those things are easy for me. And I'm not even sure that can be taught. I just have a feeling that it's an innate ability, a sense and way of looking at things that some people are born with. And I think these people (like myself) can't ever put their stories and characters out of their head. They linger and follow and nag at our everyday thoughts like a cosmic Jiminy Cricket.
What all of this boils down to is that I need to write. And I haven't been. So, I have come to the point where I am trying to will the writer in me to tell the regular me to "shut the fuck up." I think that's the only way I will be able to write again. And I must. Writing is the way I keep my spirit alive, and in the dark, violent, ultra-modern, consumer-driven times in which we live, your spirit must be kept alive.
