quietlaughter

I have been quiet, I know, since the beginning of the year. I was on holiday in Ottawa – had a great week. Spent the days reconnecting with an old friend, met new friends and did a whole lot of nothing (though I did manage to do some writing.. about 17,000 words of a new story whoo!). I also spent a good chunk of time contemplating the coming year. I have said before that I am not a big one for making resolutions or anything like that – but I am in a ‘let’s do the opposite of whatever it is you’ve normally been doing’ kind of frame of mind these days and I made a few re:solutions. I am looking for real solutions to issues – rather than false kind of promises to myself to get up off my ass and do something about it. One of my re:solutions is to hash out some things where my writing is concerned. I waffled a bit at the beginning of the week wondering what the point was of writing anything at all. I was ready to walk away from writing completely. I am still waffling and working that bit out, but, in the meantime, while I am still undecided, I am just going to keep writing whatever comes up. If nothing does – I will be off doing other things like any ‘normal’ person… *sigh*

You see – one of the reasons the past month has been so jarring for me is that I am accustomed to writing every day. Not just writing a little but writing a massive amount. There has not been a dry period in about 5 years and the only reason there was a dry period prior to that was because of something that happened that put me off writing for two years completely before that (think emotional not physical trauma but I’m ok now). This of course, doesn’t make me super human or special in any way – I am pretty ordinary on all ways, but this is my first experience with a blockage of this sort. I simply have always had this unquenchable thirst when it comes to writing. I am not kidding when I say that writing is like breathing for me. Thousands of pages of stories, poems, nonsense … sitting around doing shit all in my house. Some of it has been read by others, a lot of it hasn’t. None of it has been sent anywhere. What’s the point of that? I wonder.

This is the bit I am working out. I am feeling very disconnected from the writing. It scares me. This is my re:solution this year. To re-connect with my writing. It will be an interesting journey to say the least. How I am going to do this will take a few different forms – whatever kind of strikes me or inspires me at the time. For now – I am committed to writing a page a day. It’s an exercise from my dear friend Sandra Jensen’s Diving Deeper Writing Workshop that was introduced last September. I couldn’t get into the exercise when it was first introduced, but I am into it  now. Every now and again I will share a page – or I may share them all (I’m moody I know). I trust Sandra when she says it’s the best way to reconnect with your writing – to get to know what is blocking, what you don’t want to write about and what is keeping you from going more deeply into your writing….

So this is where I am, perched on the edge of the cliff, waiting. Ready to fly or dive. Either will be good.

la