I wrote 4 blog posts in all of July. I wrote only 3 in August.
I usually average between 8-10 posts a month, and beyond that, I write daily. I am usually saturated with content I want to get down on paper. Staying up until the wee hours of the night or writing down some speck of an idea that pops into my head while I’m at dinner with friends or brushing my teeth in the morning. That’s how this thing works. I have no agenda for content creation. I ooze it, and all I do is listen to when I’m being demanded to write. It has no schedule.
I would not know how to teach someone how to write or how to come up with ideas about what to write. Sure, I can teach grammar, spelling, proper syntax— things of that nature. But this burning desire to write deeply and emotively is not something I learned from someone more experienced or more knowledgeable. Writing is most definitely a skill I will always have to refine and rework, but even so, style is something I just feel. I become it. I can almost taste it. How could I possibly teach someone the embodiment of them self?
But these last few months I’ve run dry. And it’s not that I have writer’s block, per se. I know exactly how it feels to have writer’s block. This is different.
I’ve recently written about 6-7 posts on a range of different topics, and every time I reread them, I can feel something is off. I sit there and think, “What the heck is it? Why can’t I bring myself to post this?” They’re fully developed. They all contain a central message. They’re done. They are, but the thing with writing is you can always add more detail, more context. You can always reword or rewrite or revise a sentence. I never wait for a post to be 100% done. If I did, I would never post anything. I wait until I know that I’ve captured that “feeling”, and that’s when I post. That’s when I feel confident that even if there are some grammatical mistakes or flaws to whatever degree in my writing, at the end of a post, I transformed ink into a feeling, and that is when I know a body of work is done.
So if I’m being honest here, the reason I scratch a full post at the end of writing it is because somewhere along the way I lost a connection to it. Though I can’t fully describe why or how, I can feel it. It’s like losing a part of yourself and wondering where it went. You can sit around and wonder where that part of you vanished off to, but at the end of the day, it’s all guesswork. It’s gone, and that’s about as much as you’ll ever know.
The only good thing about being in this drought is that I’m bound to go up from here. Even if “here” isn’t for a little while longer, I know this phase won’t last forever. I may lose a connection to the ideas I try to elaborate on, but I have never lost a connection to writing.
I think it’s pretty common for people to go through the same feelings in context to other parts of life. Maybe you’re in a weird spot with your significant other. Maybe you’re in a weird spot in your career. Maybe you’re in a weird spot physically, and you just feel off. It’s important to remember that life is not always rainbows and butterflies, and when you allow yourself to feel off instead of forcing your way to normalcy, you will (sooner or later) learn what that circumstance was trying to teach you.
I have a theory that you can never fail at what you’re pursuing or what you want if you’re being authentic and genuine to who you truly are. That doesn’t mean you won’t go through droughts or get rerouted. It just means that the most authentic version of you, which includes feeling your highs and lows, will always lead you to the place you’re supposed to be. The worst thing you can do is force yourself to do something that feels unaligned to what that voice in you is directing you to do.
So, even though I have only written a few posts in the last two months, I know that I’m in this lull for a reason. I also know that in due time, it will end, my creativity will return, and I’ll have an influx of content I’ll want to share. But in the meantime, I will read until my eyeballs fall out and keep a notebook open to a blank page so that when the levee bursts, I will be there with my life vest.
Comments