Some days, there seems to be no going forward at all. There is, in fact, no movement at all...not going forward, no going back, nothing. Just a standing still, an infuriating incapacitating lack of movement that could easily set the stage for stagnation, and then the ultimate--death. Not in a physical or biological sense, but death nonetheless, of an idea, a possibility, the permanent blocking of a path that had not that long ago seemed to open and unobstructed.
Yet here I am, stopped dead my tracks, unable to take another step forward. And I call to mind the words a math professor once used to describe the peculiar habit I had back then of coming to a screeching halt when a problem presented itself that I could not solve.
"It's like you come to a tree," he said, "and you stop. Instead of moving around it and continuing, you stay behind the tree, looking around it, but afraid to go on."
Well, in terms of math, that fear was very real. It was an algebra class, and I'd never even got the gist of fractions and decimals in grade school, so I had no business even dabbling in anything beyond basic math. And that fear? Well, it was of failing, of course, because if I wasn't certain of anything else, I was positive that only failure lay at the end of any mathematical journey I might undertake. And I haven't been proven wrong in that theory yet.
But words? What do I have to fear from words? Plenty. That they won't come out sounding right, that I'll have to rearrange them until they do, and then, when will I know I've succeeded? Or maybe I'll think they flow well and adequately convey my meaning, but how can I be sure?
The truth? I can't. I can only trust that my years of crafting sentences and building them into paragraphs will work, and that others will want to read them. Because at its most fundamental level, writing isn't about hoping people will read my stories and like them. It's about reading my life and seeing me at my most exposed and hoping they'll understand and not think me too ridiculous.
As most serious writers know, writing isn't simply the act of stringing words together into pretty necklaces that we hope will sell. It's about stepping out into broad daylight wearing all our faults and our foibles imprinted on a sandwich board for all the world to see. And for many of us, those boards are large and very heavy and sometimes hard to carry all day, every day. But we do.
Because we must.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
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