For No Other Reason

I’ve been listening to advice on writing all my life. Recently, the words that have stuck with me are “write for no other reason than to write”. The writer who spoke these words meant to disempower writer’s block, claiming that writer’s block is really nothing but fear–fear of what others will think, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of having to live up to one’s own dreams.

What others think of my writing has little effect on me. I’ve read my words out loud in classes and workshops. I’ve been accepted and rejected. I’ve received useful criticism and I’ve been told there’s no interest in anything I’ll ever do. For whatever reason, (and maybe this is the only way that I’m different from most writers I know), I don’t really care about others’ opinions of my work unless it gives me reason to make improvements.

I can rule out fear of failure. I’m good at failure. Failure has its own drawer in my armoire and keeps a toothbrush in my medicine cabinet.

Fear of success? I’ve heard this for years and I don’t know what it means. I’ve met success a few times. I can’t name the feeling “fear”. Maybe it’s more of a surprise.

Living up to my dreams–that’s something to think about. Does anyone ever live up to their dreams? My experience has been attainment of a dream only to find it has been replaced with a loftier one.

In all honesty, I never suffered writer’s block until therapy. In my youngest years, nothing could stop me from writing, but there was a recurring theme, something I had to exorcise from my psyche. As for quality, I had my hits and misses. I was agented at one point, and I was also one of the rare people who managed to get an agent and didn’t get a book deal. The criticism was always the same on the qualified rejections–the work was too safe, not enough was at risk. That criticism was correct, and I’m glad that novel was never published.

There were two successes with short stories. I disliked both short stories that were published, so that was unsatisfying.

I workshopped. I joined groups. Although I wanted to be published, it was more of an uncontrollable urge.

Therapy, although I needed it, killed the impetus to write. I missed writing but the need was gone. For the first time, I found myself having no ideas. No stories burning to be told. No plots manifesting in my hours of daydreaming. I concluded that resolving my childhood trauma had silenced my inner-bard.

I was wrong. My bard took a twenty-year nap.

I wrote three books in 2020. The first was a memoir–everything I had tried to express in fiction when I was younger, but without sugar-coating or avoiding the chasms of my own pain. I took the time to polish it and change names, knowing it can never be published. I was writing for the sake of writing, and the abused child in me finally felt heard. I recommend it to anyone. In the end, it was more effective and cheaper than therapy.

Before I could finish the most depressing memoir ever written, fiction was forming again. I remembered its birth, back in 2006 when I became obsessed with the Roosevelts. The idea in no way resembles the Roosevelts now, but it bloomed. Once again, I found myself easily writing every day, but without the recurring themes of my youth.

I’ve never cared for blogging, but here I am. Maybe my new work will go somewhere. Maybe it won’t. I’m sticking with the advice of writing for no other reason. It’s just writing.