Lost Talent?

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.