The Writer Who Doesn’t Write

Lately … um, by lately I mean for the last few years, I have been referring to myself as the Writer Who Doesn’t Write. Yes, with capitals. The reason is obvious - my whole writing schtick just fell off the edge, took a nose dive into oblivion and has been swirling around in the void for ages.

I was coming off a few years of numerous creative writing courses, a successfully completed Creative Writing certificate from University of Toronto, acceptance into the Novel Writing program at Stanford, various flash fiction contests, submissions to literary whatsits, a short-listed published memoir piece, a weekly blog on Substack (and then my website, and then back to Substack and then once again to my website and then nowhere). It was a busy time of creativity.

And, then, bang, I just stopped. Hit a wall. Gave it all up. Couldn’t find the fucks to give. Which maybe wouldn’t seem so tragic if I’d simply just moved on, taken up pottery or beading or something. But, it didn’t happen that way - I have been pining for it ever since. Whenever writing comes up in conversation, I cry. So much grief that I haven’t allowed myself to feel. Because what kind of a loser just stops doing the thing they love?

This Kind Of Loser Right Here. Me.

I’ve been looking for things to blame because if I could name the villain who came between my beloved and me, I might be able to slay it. So, I searched and I came up with a few possible easy-to-target impediments like:

1. Social media and the dumbing down of our brains, attention spans and patience. Not to mention the algorithms, doom scrolling, and hate-mongering.

2. The psychic fall-out from Covid and all the douchebaggery therewith that radically changed the world I’d previously known how to navigate.

3. The academicization (I know that’s not a word and yet spell check is letting me get away with it, clearly reading the room) of creativity wherein the teaching focusses on technique and grammar (like I didn’t go to school in the 70s and phonics wasn’t my favourite subject), classmate feedback that focusses on how they would have written my piece and how it would have been better because they’d written it, and “constructive” criticism rather than on, say, creativity itself.

4. Growing old and, therefore, ipso facto, becoming irrelevant. Is there anything sadder than seeking relevance only to find that it simply does not exist for someone my age, that the finite amount of relevance the world can hold has been scooped up by the younger, prettier, cooler generations?

And/But as real and valid as these points are, they were not enough to explain the banishment of my beloved to the cold cellar. Which brought me to a grown-up moment and I hate grown-up moments because they are always hard won and invariably right.

Let The Grown-Ups Speak

Here it is: the only real impediment was me. I was to blame. I let those other things justify my lapse. Fear, grief, ego.

I forgot that writing is fun.

I forgot that creative expression is my birthright.

I forgot that taking up space, however much or little, is okay.

I forgot that my voice needn’t cut through the noise; it can exist alongside it.

I forgot that writing helps me make sense of the world and that making sense of the world is my raison d’etre (or one of them, anyway).

I don’t know what, exactly, has led me to this moment where the possibility of writing again is back on the table. Where I’ve crept down to the basement and opened the door to the cellar where my writer self is joyfully awaiting me and not judging me for being such a dumbass. Where she has clapped her hands and said, Let’s get moving! We have work to do! as though there was no pause at all.

But here I am, however tentatively. However imperfectly.