When a Passion Becomes a Curse

Most writers suffer writer's block at some point along the way.  While this isn't my greatest issue when it comes to writing, the feeling is the same.  We writers have a grand passion for the stories we want to share, and when we can't do what we love with all of our souls, we suffer.  The darkness that resides in the mind of most writers is often a source of inspiration.  We can draw upon that dark pit that would otherwise eat us from the inside when we need to evoke pain, loss, and sometimes even joy in our words.  We keep the darkness from spreading by writing - and it might be a delicate balance, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

What happens, then, if a writer can't write?  Does the black abyss slowly start to eat away at us, do we fall prey to the darkness that we also secretly crave?  

Well, I don't speak for everyone, only myself, but I can safely say that on a day-to-day basis, I survive.  It is only when I have a moment that I realize how massive the darkness become, how it has seeped into more than just one part of me.  My conundrum now is not only how to keep it in check, to feed the beast as it were, but also how to make it work to my advantage.  

Never, in all my thirty years, have I hated writing as much as I do right now.  This isn't to say I have started to hate my creations - I love them now more than ever.  The less time I am allowed to spend with my literary friends, the more dear they become.  No, my issue now is a horrid college class.  English taught by an engineer is an oxymoron, and torture to an artist.  Anytime I try to let my passion eke out and splash a page, I am eviscerated in the grading.  And yet...I cannot bring my wild, writer's soul in check for the whims of one narrow minded man.  I am now left trying to salvage the raw wounds left from too long spent from what I love, all the while weaving an essay of supreme effort that can satisfy me enough to move one.  Because I have to move on, and I don't mean passing the class.  A year from now, ten years from now, the class will be a memory, but I will still be a writer.  And that is why this grand passion can also be a curse.  It never truly leaves us, but at times, it can be overpowering, and there is nothing to be done but survive.

L.E.

A Break in Search of Sanity

For all those who, like me, are not full time writers, I hope the following can help you in some tiny way, not give up.


I have said before that I disagree with the edict that a writer must write every single day.  The adage of "even if it's a little".  My brain simply doesn't work like that.  I need to write as a release, and sometimes, the downtime required for that simply doesn't exist in a busy day.

A quick detour into my personal feelings on continuing education.  When I was in high school, I was the very top of my class. I had scholarships to every college I applied to, but never enough to have covered living expenses, and certainly not enough to help find a way to balance my other great passion: my horses.  As such, I made the decision when I was eighteen that my horses were my family, and they would come first.  In the interim, I have only found the prospect of college far too expensive to entertain.  For someone who is not wealthy, does not come from wealthy parents, and has no hidden relative willing to foot any bills, college was simply never an option.  Well, for the first time in over a decade, it finally is, thanks in large part to a realization of circumstances (i.e. financial aid) and a dependable, if not high paying job to cover my horses.  

While I could go on for quite awhile about my opinions about the college system and how it marginalizes those of us who do not fit into the well to do or top financial aid categories, that's not the purpose of my morning.  Indeed, the purpose of my morning is to finally have a tiny window of opportunity to WRITE.

Full time job, full time school, part time job, and volunteering doesn't tend to lend much chance of anything else.  So far this year, I've spent my tiny windows of freedom with my horses.  However, I have an entire morning, and so I am going to write as if my life depended on it.  My life might not, but at times it feels as if my soul does.

And so, in typical Rambling fashion, I have come to my conclusion and the very point of this narrative.  For those who have a million other things on their plate, don't feel like just because you missed a day, that writing is ruined.  This isn't a twelve step program.  If you don't make it to your Writers Anonymous meeting a few times, they won't kick you out.  Instead, think about what keeps you going on a day to day basis.  Do you still see stories in everyday threads of life?  Do you still wake up and hear your characters say a few words of greeting?  If any of this is true, or a hundred other ways you feel the creativity of being a writer, hold on to it.  There will come a quiet morning, and you can remember what it is to put thoughts to paper and let your spirit fly.  

And so now, without further ado, I leave the internet world behind in search of my sanity.  I'm only hoping that by the end of my morning, I will have found it somewhere.  Anywhere...