Subject To Change

When I first moved to Halifax, I didn’t write very much. There was just too much going on in my brand new life for me to sit down and write stories or a novel. Between working and partying, I didn’t have the time, and even if I had, I couldn’t focus on anything creative. I kept thinking that when my life settled down, I would start writing again, but it’s funny how you can get used to not doing something, even if that something has been really important to you since you were nine years old.

It’s not that I haven’t tried. In the past few years, I have tried storyline after storyline, and nothing sticks. That’s not really anything new; I’ve always started an idea, realized it didn’t speak to me, and abandoned it for something else. But I have written a novel – two, actually, but one merely followed the other – so I know I can do it. Last night as I was lying in bed waiting to fall asleep, I wondered if perhaps that was the problem. I wrote the novels, but I never finished editing and rewriting them. I never sent them out to a publishing house or literary agency. I never planned to abandon them, but rather I figured I should take a break from the story and work on something else for the time being so that I could go back to it with fresh eyes. I just never went back.

That’s what I’m hoping because the real issue now is that I can’t seem to find the words I want to use, not the way I used to. I can’t get the flow down. The characters don’t speak to me. In my current project, I even created a character who shares some similarities with me, but it’s still not working. And if it’s not that I have unfinished business with my former book, then what? Perhaps I have lost whatever talent I once had. What’s that saying? If you don’t use it, you lose it?

Would I be satisfied with never writing fiction again? Could I simply read (because thank god I haven’t lost my love of that!) and be happy? But whether I have lost my talent or not, I find that when I am truly immersed in a book, I have this overwhelming need to write. I’ve tried to give up on writing, at least for the time being, while my life is so full of family and work (well, work when I’m not on mat leave, I guess). Perhaps it is something I could do during my retirement, whenever that should be. But I am never able to give up. It’s as if a part of myself is missing.

So I guess the choice for the time being is between going back to that book I wrote eight or so years ago, or continuing on with the book I recently started. Between the time I came up with this idea for today’s blog entry and now, I did have another idea for the new one that might make it a bit better, so maybe I’ll give that a try.

I just have to keep trying and hope that my talent, such as it might be, is not permanently lost but can be found again.

Today’s prompt from NaBloPoMo is “When you are writing, do you prefer to use a pen or a computer?”

For non-fiction, I generally use a computer. This would be for my blog, obviously, and also for essays when I was in university. I currently write for our firm’s in-house newsletter, and when I compose articles and book reviews, I always use the computer. I can use a pen and paper, but I generally just find it easier to type directly onto the computer.

For fiction, however, it’s a completely different scenario. I have tried to use a computer for a first draft, but the words just don’t flow. I think it’s mainly because that is how I have always written fiction. In my early childhood, we didn’t have a personal computer at home, and even when my father bought our first computer, we often spent the weekend at my grandmother’s, where there was no computer. A pen and notebook were portable, so that’s what I used.

But even now, with a laptop, I use a pen and notebook when I’m writing. I often think about trying to use the laptop as there are definitely benefits. For one, it means I don’t have to type everything later. For another, I wouldn’t necessarily have to write in a linear fashion. I always have, but sometimes you think of a scene that you’d like to insert between some that you have already written, or you decide to move a scene to another spot. It’s not that I can’t do that with a notebook, but then you end up with a bunch of papers to insert physically until you get a chance to type everything at the end.

What matters, however, is the flow of words. As long as using a pen and paper allows me to write, then I’ll keep doing that. Then again, I’ve noticed lately that I’m not writing as well as I used to, and I’m experiencing writer’s block, so perhaps it’s time to try something new?

I had actually forgotten about NaBloPoMo until I read Tiffany’s latest entry, and I thought about how I don’t write here often enough, and this might just make me get back into the groove. I’ve often participated in things like this for that very purpose, and it usually doesn’t work, but what the hell.

Today’s prompt is to describe what you love most about writing.

I discovered two things about myself at the age of nine that became very important – namely, that I love to read and I love to write. This was when I was in grade 3, and Ms. Nurse, our English teacher, read to us books such as “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (or was the latter read to us in grade 4? We had Ms. Nurse for both years, so I get it mixed up, but it doesn’t really matter). She also had us write stories in these small composition books that had a large block of space above each lined section for drawings. I sucked at the drawing part, something that continued through the ensuing years, but I found that I absolutely loved coming up with stories. I even incorporated chapters, complete with cliffhanger endings.

I enjoy writing here, but my true love of writing is in the form of fiction. And what I love most about writing is the same thing that I love about reading – the ability to lose myself in a story. Even when your life is fantastic, you need to have some form of escape, whether that come about in the form of a good book you’re reading, or a writing project you’ve started, or a favourite television show, or even going for a walk in the woods. I consider myself fortunate that I can find such escape in all of those ways.

I don’t have the same time to write as I used to, and in some ways, that makes me sad. But the reasons I don’t have much time for it are all good. I’m married to a wonderful man and we have a beautiful daughter I absolutely adore, so of course I want to spend time with them. Writing is a loner activity, so it gets pushed to the back burner. Sometimes I thought that I should just give up on writing because I kept thinking about how a common piece of advice to writers is to write everyday, and it just wasn’t happening for me anymore. I realized that I can’t give up on writing, because it’s just part of who I am, and I have decided to let go of that piece of advice. I try to write as much as possible, but when it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. I’m working on a project now, and I try to work on it whenever Claire has a nap. But there is no deadline; if it takes me ten years to write it, then so be it. What matters most is that I continue to love it.