MonkeyPants

Writing About Not Writing.

I have always considered myself a writer. My friends and family and teachers always considered me a writer. “Oh, she’s so talented,” they’d say. It was just this thing. Like being right-handed or having curly hair. So, in times like now, I am gripped by a kind of existential angst, because I’m not writing.

I’m really not writing. I kept thinking, “I’ve got to start a project” all this month, and then not starting it. To be fair, I have been doing other things that take up my energy, but if I’d wanted to write, I would have been writing.  Prolifically.

So what if I’m not a writer? What am I, then? A teacher, an artist, a baker, a cook, a gardener? A girlfriend, a daughter, a sister, a friend? A crossword doer, a reader, a photographer? No one ever gave me expectations about being those. Not like being a writer.

There’s a little part of me that worries I’ve used up all my writing juice. “That’s it, you’re done with writing,” it says. “Now you’ve got lots of other things to do, but not writing.”

I don’t know what’s happening with this not-writing thing, but I feel like I’m a woodbug that’s been exposed from under a rock: No idea where to go and I can’t see the bigger picture enough to make a plan.