Why I Stopped Writing, Part Two

The spark was gone. My days were suddenly filled with the experiences I required, the expertise, the daily drama....but at the end of the day I collapsed exhausted over a pile of ungraded Composition papers, unpaid medical bills, and dirty dishes. The laundry piled up. The toys cluttered my mind. Every ounce of my creativity and joy was squeezed out of me and into my children's lives, their play, their health. There was nothing left for writing. I was full of joy, I didn't even notice it. I even thought to myself, if I could lose my soul churning need to write, maybe I am not a writer after all. Maybe I am something else.

More empty notebooks. I tried photography. I tried fiber arts. I learned how to cook. I taught myself how to sew, sort of. I distracted myself, ignoring, neglecting the thing inside of me that had shaped my identity for so long. Maybe I am something else.....

I would tell myself, if I can just get these dishes washed, then I can blog. Never happened. If I can get these papers graded, but then the baby cries. If I can just have 10 minutes, but then the work would go into draft folders and later deleted because the distracted ramblings of a failing wife and mother were uninteresting and horrible anyway. Maybe I am something else.....

I hired Jessica to help me dig my way out housework so I could climb out of the abyss. Slowly, slowly the whispers of encouragement from Chad and a handful of friends made it through the windstorm of doubt and insecurity that held me pinned in the darkness. Slowly the pin lights of the stars glimmered in the night sky.  Slowly, the country air dried my tears, set me on my feet, and I could see the miracle of everything that has happened. Isaac's diagnosis, the farm, the city house, my beautiful girls, my wonderful husband.....all of it....needs to be written about.

It is time. I am not something else. I am a writer.

I made a new rule. WRITE FIRST. Even if there are so many other things that need my attention. Unless there is blood or something is on fire, Mama gets 30 minutes every night.

Every time I sit down to grade papers I take 30 minutes and I write. Sometimes it ends up a blog post, sometimes, a poem, sometimes story notes. I write first, then work. Surprisingly, I am getting more of both done more efficiently. The need has returned. It is eating me up.

There is a problem though and it is really, really problematic. My skill has dulled. I thought that blogging wold keep my skills sharp and ready, but instead, just as I tell my students in beginning Composition.....what you read changes what you write, affects your style. My own writing began to diminish in skill, I started to pick up on the stylistics of other bloggers that I read. Fragmented sentences started to blight my work. Run-ons. Horrible grammar all in the name of writing style? This horrible new awareness of the lack of skill in my own writing started throwing my work into the virtual drawer of draft doom. Every single time I wrote a sentence that started with and, but, or and it wasn't just a clause it was just an hanging fragment, I would get sick to my stomach. I started seeing so many other bloggers do this too. This is so much worse of a plague than just killing the Oxford Comma. Facebook is one thing, a place where people type from their phones or just too fast to even pay attention to punctuation or spelling, but blogs are another creature. Here I stand trying to re-claim my title of writer and I can't even compose a decent sentence.

The self critic is the worst executioner of potential and creativity. I had to picture myself at the guillotine, head down on the block, suddenly side kicking the hooded executioner, freeing my own hands and making a grand dramatic escape, laughing at the crowd from the rooftops! Freedom!

With freedom comes responsibility and I know that metaphorically I will always be on the run from this hooded darkness, trying to bring me down. I must be agile, aware, and on the move.

I unpacked my old textbooks from undergrad and gradschool writing classes. Of course I kept them. I carry one with me at all times, even this is an exercise from Wild Mind. It is called what I want to tell you about......