On Writing, Being and Becoming
You're not only a writer when you write. You're a writer every time. It's in the way you view things and how you react and how you think. Especially how you think.
Your mind is beautiful, writer. The words will come, I promise.
I posted this on my WhatsApp status last month. It was the week when I started writing again after more than six months of break. I call it break not block because I could write articles and blog posts and copies and whatnot but I COULDN’T write stories like I used to (I stopped writing stories about a year ago) and I couldn’t even write the poetry I had gotten used to writing.
Things looked bleak. For a long time, I’d worried about my inability to write. I wondered if I had lost that touch, if my time as a writer had run its course and if I should give up and learn a skill or something. In those first few months, I wondered a lot and it added to my anxiety issues and got me more depressed.
For a long time, I searched for something to give me hope. Something to remind me that my identity as a writer—a path I’ve chosen because of my passion—wasn’t dependent on how many words I spewed in a day, week or months. It was by being. It was there in the way I listened to lyrics first before instrumentals and how the combination of both gave me soundgasm. It was there in how much I loved every environment I was in, how I watched for the lightning and the movement and the people and… everything. Writing was me; I was and always will be writing. But I didn’t find any reminders. I wasn’t in the headspace to give one, either.
Through May and June, I struggled, then gave up in August. Decided that writing articles and blog posts for money were probably where I was headed all along. I took it in good faith but I never liked it. And every time I read works from writers I used to write with or writers who came after I started writing, I would feel sad. Very sad.
I wrote for the first time in over six months on January 6th, 2023 and I cried. Big, fat tears rolled down my cheeks as I added finishing touches to what would turn out to be an almost 2,000 words Creative Nonfiction piece. I couldn’t believe I was writing. And when I went on to continue steadily as the days progressed, I felt fulfilled.
It reminded me of a friend, bless his heart, who told me the thing he was scared the most of was being unable to write. I understand that fear; I’ve walked, breathed and lived in it. I know it like the back of my hand and I don’t want to experience it again.
If you’re a writer and you’re in this big break you can’t seem to get out of, determine why you were writing in the first place. As long as you’re doing it because you want to and not because you like the tag, you’re safe. The words would come. And just as we’re not defined by what we are or are not, you’re not defined as a writer by the number of words you write or didn’t write. You’re whole. Complete. Void of any additives and you’re badass with a beautiful mind.
It will come.
