It’s storming outside and quiet inside and I don’t want to write.
I don’t want to write because it means I have to get up and get my computer. I’m comfortable on the couch. Everything is quiet and I don’t want to move.
I don’t want to write because I don’t want to open my computer. I want to be technology-free. Stupid technology.
I don’t want to write because I’m reading and I just want to keep reading. Maybe forever. And fiction. I want to read fiction forever. No more non-fiction for me. Harumph.
I don’t want to write because I haven’t written at all this week and I’m embarrassed about it. Who am I to call myself a writer? Better to just give up now.
I don’t want to write because my brain is nicely blank and my thoughts are comfortably amorphous. Writing will give those thoughts shape, then pin them down and examine them. See? Look at that! A judgment here, a grump over there. I knew it. Not nearly as nice as I was hoping when they were just swirling in my head. Wait! a random delight! Well, I’m glad for that at least.
Maybe if I keep writing I can find more of those… Grr… but I really don’t want to write.
But I’m going to. I’m going to find three sentences about three things and then I’m going to post this slice JUST LIKE THIS.
- I have just realized that I am worried about a lot of things. Well, no wonder I don’t want to write. I’ll just ignore the truth that writing often soothes the worry.
- I love watching my children play on the sandbar in the lake. I love the way they get completely absorbed in whatever game they make up and how they traipse about half-in half-out of the murky water, finding rocks, playing with the red mud, diving, swimming, hiding in the bits of bushes sticking out of the water. I wish for them as many sandbar hours as they can get for as long as they can get them.
- I feel inadequate because I cannot bring myself to read the professional books I brought with me this summer. I love fiction. I really really love it. But I *should* be reading some of these other books, right? I may need to hide the horrible pd stack so that it stops glaring at me from the corner because I have a couple of really good novels hidden behind a pillow on the couch.
Harumph. I still don’t really want to write. So I’m stopping. For now. Because now that I’ve started I have a feeling that I might need to keep going. Later. Once the storm is over. Or maybe at the end of the next chapter.
Writing. Hmph.
Persistence and Pedagogy 
I’m glad you wrote, and I completely understand the challenge of getting going and I also completely AGREE that sometimes we replenish ourselves with fiction and doing what feels like “junk” thinking.
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This is a piece every teacher should read aloud to his or her classes about WRITING ANYWAY – for look at the raw truths, the humor, the insight, and the beauty (“sandbar hours” is going to stick with me now) that you produced by pressing on. Not to mention that it’s excellent for teaching voice. I absolutely love it – and your willingness to tell it straight.
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I have the same guilt about the professional books…I went to a workshop last week and now I am slowly getting back into school mode thinking…which makes the guilt worse…you are not alone my friend!
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Great job writing!
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Hooray for pushing through the hard and also for knowing when enough was enough. It is enough. ❤️
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But you wrote anyway, and 1, 2, and 3 are all truths. This piece is one of those examples that reminds me of the Charles Simic quote that poetry is someone else’s snapshot in which you see yourself (or something like that). I’ve been under the influence of fiction this past week. Finally reading Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, which was truly brilliant. I finished it yesterday afternoon, and could have written about it…but instead I started reading it again. Thanks for this entry.
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