I’m in a slump. How about you?
Life has been going really well for me lately. Writing? Not so much.
Photo courtesy of @stayandroam from Unsplash.
“I don’t think writer’s block is real. I think it’s the mythos of capitalism — that you’re always supposed to be producing; this anxiety of being productive and quantifying your self-worth through page counts and word counts.”
Hey, what’s up?
Gosh, this feels like the DM I got the other night from some guy who ghosted me three years ago, now expecting some enthusiastic response from me and a labor-free hook-up.
Anyway, I’m sorry for not writing for over a month. This isn’t the only page that has seen a lack of text; all my Google Docs are blank, all my notebooks torn up and thrown away, and my lofty goal to write a poem every day this year has been tossed out the window. Writing, simply put, has not been going well.
I’ve also not been a productive reader. I’ve bought so many books since I was tearing through one per week, and now I can barely get myself to finish a few pages per day. I’m not sucked in. I’m not engaged. And I feel like shit for it.
Should I call it writer’s block? A creative block? I don’t know. I’ve certainly written plenty of other things. I’m starting to get ready to apply for grad schools, which entails statements of purpose, prepping my writing samples, and just generally existing in a perpetual writing-fueled state of anxiety.
I think Ocean Vuong makes a good point in the quote I provided above. I think about how much my poetry was prompted by the desire to create content rather than the desire to write. Sometimes I don’t know if I would have anything to say at all, were it not for the pressure to be constantly creating.
I used to write books when I was little because I loved writing. I loved making a safe place for me to escape to, the little fantasy lands sculpted by my brain, and that just doesn’t feel as gratifying right now, because I’m thinking about what people might want, not what I want. Maybe it’s a need to reframe my thinking.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. I didn’t think about what that meant or entailed, or the implications that you need money to survive as an adult. How many of us are full-time authors in the world? How many of us can afford to be?
A very cute butterfly. Nothing tragic could possibly happen in this story, right? Right??
Maybe Vuong’s point in this all, is that while capitalism drives us to be creators, our minds and our hearts drive us to be writers. And we need to refresh those things from time to time. We need to bring our stories with us, which means we need to step away from our computers, from the pen and the page, and take our bodies into the world, where they belong, and find the words that need to be written.
In other ways, writing has been going great! If you don’t follow me on social media, big news - my debut fiction novel, Just Us, has been picked up for publication by The Main Street Rag, a small press based in North Carolina. As of now, we have a tentative release date of March 2022, but there will be advanced sales in the coming months, which I will keep all of you abreast of. We also picked a cover design, which I’m so happy to share with you all!
Onto the next project: TGOFT. What a cryptic acronym, you say? Well, hopefully, you’ll hear much more about it in the coming months, as I begin planning and writing it. Much love to you all, and thanks for sticking around here. Don’t forget to check out my capitalism-fueled venture on Patreon, if you haven’t. I’m still posting there at least once a week, with new poetry, personalized poems, and a monthly poetry chapbook.
Until I decide to write next!
