There once was a time when I was always writing. I don’t mean in this blog, although that is certainly true as well. I’m referring to my fiction writing. Those of you who have known me for a long time know that my first dream for a career was to be a writer. I was nine years old when that came to me, and it took me many years to realize that it is not, generally speaking, so simple as making that decision. Not only is talent a factor, but let’s face it, so is luck. You have to get the right agent with the right connections. Or if you decide not to hire an agent, then you have to hope that an editor picks up your manuscript from the slush pile and is captivated by the first chapter or two. Hell, maybe even the first page.
But even when I began to realize that I probably would not be able to live my life solely as a writer – at least not at first – I wrote. I took breaks during the semesters when I was in college and university of course, but I wrote like crazy in the summers, filling my evenings after work by scribbling in a notebook. Writer’s Block would rear its ugly head from time to time, but I would push through it and get back on track.
I have an idea now, and I have started writing. I have developed characters, though of course they will develop more as I go. For the past couple of weeks (and to continue this week until Friday), Neal is away so once I have Claire in bed, the evening is mine. It’s not like that’s a huge amount of time because my early mornings mean that I also have to go to bed at a reasonable hour, but there is still time. And yet, more often than not, I find myself not writing. I allow myself to be pulled into scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed. Looking up the weather forecast. Checking to see if some blogs have been updated. Looking for toys for Claire on the Toys ‘R Us website and Kijiji.
Or, even if I don’t allow myself to get into the time-suckage that is the internet, I will make the excuse that I’m just too tired and I decide to read instead (which is fine – I love to read, but I should also be making time to write).
I could make the excuse that I’m hardly to blame these days. I’m the mother of an almost-three-year-old. My husband goes away from time to time which means that I’m on call for all of the mothering and house maintenance. I started a new job in December which is using up a lot of my brain energy.
But the truth of the matter is that this started before all of that. It started when I moved to Nova Scotia. Maybe a little before, but that’s when I started to notice it. When I first came here, I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t have any family in the city, I lived by myself, so really, all I had was time. But I also had a city to explore and, because I didn’t really have to answer to anyone in my personal life at that time, I was a little drunk on freedom. I had too much energy for me to sit down and focus on a novel. Hell, I even found it more difficult to focus on books I was reading. And honestly, with the changes that happened in my life in a relatively short period of time (meeting Neal, getting promoted at work, moving in with Neal, getting engaged then married, having a child), I suppose it’s no wonder that I have found it difficult to sit down and focus on an imaginary world.
But there has to be a time when I force myself back into it. I guess that sounds more negative than I intend, because someone might think, “Why would you force yourself into doing something in your free time that you don’t want to do?” But that’s the thing – I do want to write. There are times when I am itching to just sit down and write but it always seems to happen when I just can’t – I’m sleeping, I’m at work, I’m walking somewhere, I’m in the shower. And then, when the opportunity does arrive, I am doing anything but. I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense. Maybe I am simply out of practice. Maybe I’m scared that I have lost whatever talent I might have had once upon a time. Maybe I’m terrified that I’ll discover that it was a pipe dream all along and it was never going to happen.
I have tried to give up writing. Maybe not forever, but for the foreseeable future. And yet, I am never able to hold to that. I guess that has to mean something.
Maybe I should stop using this post as an excuse and go write something.
