Addressing the Radio Silence

I've been putting this post off for as long as I could, hoping I would get my mojo back and find something worthwhile to blog about. I don't want to sit here and make excuses as to why I haven't been blogging or promises that I will blog, if I don't know I can keep them. But the thing is that I miss writing on here. People have been commenting just to let me know they're still here reading, and I appreciate that. I want to let you all know I'm still here as well.

I do have two confessions to make that somewhat explain my internet absence. Confession one is, I haven't been writing that much. I have been editing MIRRORPASS, yes, in spurts here and tweaks there, and I like the progress I've made. There just hasn't been much of it. Which leads me to confession number two: I don't mind the lack of progress. I don't mind that I haven't been writing or editing.

In the past, whenever I was not writing, it was usually because I wanted to, but other forces were keeping me from it. Perhaps I was blocked. Perhaps I was procrastinating. Usually I was miserable and couldn't really rest until I'd solved the problem one way or another and begun writing again. It was a sensation that's hard to explain. Even when I didn't want to write, I wanted to have written--even when I wasn't working on those stories, I wanted to be.

What stands out to me now is that I don't have this sensation of needing to write. I enjoy it still, and write still, but occasionally, for fun. I haven't fallen in love with any story for a while. Until that happens I am simply enjoying the unexpected respite. MIRRRORPASS feels like an old friend that I go visit every so often and reminisce with. Nothing new here, nothing exciting, but a pleasant relationship all the same.

If I was a younger writer I might be trying to guilt myself into working on something. To be an author you need to treat your writing as a job, a career. I understand that. But I have learned by many bouts of trial and error that pressuring myself into writing always has bad results. Always. To push myself now might mean a bigger burnout later. If I'm patient, whatever is supposed to happen will.

On the flip side of the coin, not writing--and being so okay with not writing--brings up the inevitable self doubt that most writers seem to face whenever they don't have a story to work on. If I'm not writing now, do I really want to be an author? Has this been a passing fad the entire time? Was I fooling myself? What if I want to feel this way?

But again, I have learned by trial and error that this doubt, this place of complacency, is more of a fad than anything else. It's one of those downs in the up and down cycle. So I'm okay with that, too. I feel rather like I'm doing the backfloat and am just 'OK' with everything exactly as it is. Could be better. Could be worse. It is what it is, and I'll have to see how it goes.

For now I can't tell you what will happen on the blog. I would love to share some of the other things I've learned in relation to writing, and if a post comes to me, maybe I will. However I have a feeling that things will be quiet around here for a while longer. And if that's so, then I hope whatever I do post can still be inspiring or thought-provoking to you who take the time to read. I'm not going anywhere. Just, right now, I don't have a whole lot to say.

So we'll see.

-Creative A