Midweek Muse: Why you should keep writing

Image by Thomas Boulvin via stock.xchng

The holidays threw a monkey wrench into my writing schedule. Family, shopping, cleaning, cooking, playing Mrs. Santa for a six-year-old – it takes a toll, but it was worth it.

Now my words are clamoring to get out, and I am starving for time alone.

I am greedy for hearing only the weather ticking on the window glass and wind through the trees, with no one else’s words to explain what it means. Only my words, seeping onto the white in front of me, unexpected.

“Release us,” they say. “We are pent up.”

Yes, I know. I am sorry. It has been too long.

And so we go, me and words, back and forth. It’s a slow wind up, as slow as it has been getting here.

It was expected, this gap in my writing schedule, so I planned my blogging month accordingly, repurposing poetry and essays I’d written years ago for weekly contributions, and writing what remained ahead of time.

A quiet discovery through the reuse of old words: I’m not the writer I used to be. It’s not a matter of better or worse; just different. I use other words, images, pacing now. The topics I choose to write about reflect where I am today. But I am not in the same place today as I was five years ago.

Things change. People change. Words change.

This subtle “Aha” makes me want to grab the lapels of my fellow writers and say with all the earnestness I can muster, “If you have nothing left to write, write anyway. If it’s all been said before, say it again. Keep writing. Don’t stop. Because what comes out on the page in this moment is forever unique. What you write tomorrow will build off those words, like a fractal, spinning out and out, similar but not the same. Capture it now. Don’t give up.”

This grabbing of the lapels is uncharacteristic of my outward calm demeanor. And yet, it is what I want for myself, someone to (gently) invade my personal space and tell me to keep going.

My words welcome a nudge.