Writer’s Block Has the Best of Me and I Start a Writing Workshop on Monday

I can’t write I can’t write I can’t write I can’t write I can’t write and it’s making me crazy. My life is an endless mess of started and never finished essays, of ideas I’m too lazy to follow through on, of frustrations.

My journal seems to be the only place I can write anymore. When I try to write anywhere else, I try too hard and the words come out all forced and mangled and misshapen. My journal is a freedom space.  If only I could figure out how to recreate that.  If only my ribs didn’t hurt.  If only I weren’t so lazy.  And if only I could remember that I’m better than I used to be and give myself some credit for that.

It’s like I’ve forgotten how to write and so I’m desperately reading essay after essay to remind me how and I’m failing. It’s scary. I’m afraid I’ll never remember, or I’m afraid that maybe I’ve read myself to death, over thought it all to the point where I’ll never be able to write again.

Creative Nonfiction, As I See It

Recently, at a gathering of writers, a fiction writer happened to comment that nonfiction writing doesn’t involve near the level of creativity that fiction writing does.  I wanted to respond in some way but I didn’t.  I kept quiet because he has four books published and a fifth on its way and I have, well, none.  And also because I wondered if maybe he was right.