I’ve been telling stories from the moment I could talk. As a kid, I loved creating characters and scenarios in my head, then bringing them to life through role-playing with friends or assigning my family members lines to speak when I gave them the go-ahead (thank you for playing along, you guys were great sports). I’d play with my Barbies and Bratz dolls for hours and hours, and I’d lose myself in the storylines I would make up for them. Sometimes the same storyline would continue for weeks on end, like a soap opera.
You’ve probably heard me say I wrote my first book at 10, but it wasn’t the very first story I wrote. Not really. I was always writing and illustrating stories on construction paper and stapling them together to pass around to friends and family. I would write comic books and leave them for Santa or the Easter Bunny. Even the Tooth Fairy was left some literature under my pillow. (It was only fair, she gave me money, after all, and I know I would be pretty peeved if all I got in exchange for a crisp few dollars was a child’s blood-crusted tooth.)
What can I say? I was an imaginative kid and I fully immersed myself in the worlds I envisioned. In school, I wrote in between assignments and at recess. At home, I would set up a snack table in my living room and scribble away long after I finished my homework. This continued through middle school and high school.
In college, I proudly declared myself a literature major freshman year and every semester felt like a dream come true. I was studying and pursuing a career in words, character development, in entire worlds that would come alive on the page.
By then, I’d written hundreds of stories, poems, and song lyrics. I’d finished two short novels and one novella. I was an adult with her imagination still intact. When I was happy, I wrote. When I was sad, I wrote. When I was angry, I wrote (the words weren’t legible, but they were there, in ink, on paper).
Writing has always been more than a passion for me. It’s a piece of me. It’s not all I am, but it’s a vital organ that keeps me breathing. It’s always been there for me. The most loyal friend. Which explains why, over the past few months, I’ve had this… pit at the bottom of my stomach. A scratch I haven’t been able to itch. A dull tension in my body. Like my insides are in knots.
Because writing has become… hard.
What’s frustrating about this deep ache I’ve been grappling with, is that I’m the one holding myself back from untying the knots. I have working fingers. Scissors, a knife cutter. All the tools to free myself from the confining rope. But when I go to try, I stop. I freeze. And I don’t know if what comes up when I’m met with a blank page is a reason for not writing versus an excuse for not writing.
From 2019 to 2021, I wrote my first full-length novel. It’s 266 pages and just shy of 90,000 words. I’m proud of that story, but as it is now, it will never see bookstore shelves. It’s not ready, and I’m not ready to edit it. It was an exercise in cathartics. I needed to write that book, but I don’t need to publish it. Not in the near future, anyway.
After such a long, emotional project, I needed to take a break from creative writing. I would write again when the right story found me. And I did. I started my current work in progress (WIP) late in 2022. I wrote a few chapters, then scrapped them. I began outlining, then scrapped that, too.
The struggle to write creatively is paralleled with the struggle to write for work lately. When I sit down to draft an article, even if it’s a subject matter I was initially excited to cover, I can feel myself - mentally, and physically - resisting. My fingers don’t fly across the keys the way they used to. I’m not submitting three articles in a day, the way I did when I first began my career as a lifestyle journalist. Pieces that should, realistically, only take me a few hours take a full workday to complete. Sometimes multiple.
It scares me, and that’s where the imposter syndrome came in.
Have I lost it? My spark? Have I just lost focus? Has my attention span shortened? Am I burnt out? Exhausted? Is my carpal tunnel making it difficult to write for extended periods of time? Am I just an ideas person? Was writing child’s play, never meant to follow me into adulthood? Am I capable of writing a second, third, or fourth novel? Will I ever publish more than articles?
These are just some of the questions I asked my husband over dinner last Friday night. We were sitting at a small table in our favorite Italian restaurant. I was dressed up for date night, a full face of glam makeup, having a breakdown over a plate of calamari (that was, I might add, uncharacteristically bland, which did not help the situation).
His answer: No, you have not lost your spark. You are a writer. You want to write, you’ve always wanted to write, so you will. But, you don’t.
That last part? It gutted me. But, I needed that kind of tough love, and it needed to come from him. Few people in this world can dish out tough love to me and it gets through my head and heart. Mark tops the list because he knows me better than anyone and he sees me the most clearly. He always has, especially when it comes to my writing.
Tomorrow, he went on, is going to be a rainy Saturday with no plans. It’s going to be a big writing day, he declared.
And he was right.
But not before I made excuses not to though. I procrastinated hard and only proved his point. We woke up early and got bagels and coffee. I caught up on The Challenge (is anyone watching this show besides me? If so, let’s chat) and The Kardashians. I baked chocolate chip cookies from scratch. Finally, around 3:30 p.m., I got comfortable on the couch and said, “Well, nothing left for me to do but write.”
And you know what? I wrote.
I wrote for almost four hours. I wrote just shy of 1,100 words. I finished a chapter, surpassed the 15,000-word mark, and made it to page 44. I even outlined the next few chapters of my manuscript.
Not all of my reasons for not writing are excuses. I am burnt out from work (I write over 1,000 words a day). I do experience wrist (and sometimes finger) pain that makes it hard to type for long periods of time. But, could I find pockets of time in my day to dedicate to my project? Yes. Have I lost focus? Somewhat, because I’ve fallen into the social media trap of wasting time in the scrolling sphere.
I haven’t lost my passion for writing. My love for my craft has grown with me. It has seen me at my worst and it has seen me at my best. Like every relationship, we’ve gone through rough patches. This has been one of them. It’s not the first and it won’t be the last.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not a writer. It just means I have to find my way back to the page. Thanks for getting me there, husband! My manuscript and I needed your mediation.
I know this feeling well. It's usually with the out of the box and creative pieces it hits me. But then I realize, I love this work and it fills me up with joy. Do what you love as the saying goes....keep going. You've got this. And go easier on yourself, because where ever you are is OK. Allow yourself to release pressure off a bit to say, I can do this. Sending love and hugs, always my dear friend.
Thank you for sharing this!! I know Imposter syndrome impacts so many of us.
You’re doing amazing and I think it’s so important to be reflective like you are! Love you and I am so proud of you!!