A writer picks up her pen and feels a shock of disbelief strike down her spine. Can she still do this? After all this time? Do others still care what she has to say? What she has to write about? Does she even care? … Yes… Yes, she does, though it’s hard to admit, because if she’s being truthful, and that’s hard to do, writing has gone back to being something that equal parts call to her and intimidates her.
When she’s spent too long away from a pen, a keyboard, a blank page…well, the thoughts don’t seem to come. Writing seems like a chore again, a have to, not want to. It becomes a burden, like water filling up a reservoir behind a dam. She is the dam. Trying her hardest to hold the power of the words at bay. Refusing to look at them, because it feels as if they will crush her beneath their power. She’s uncertain that she can take that onslaught. It’s been too long since she’s written.
The way had been clear for a while, the spillways open and running freely within the dam, but after a while, she’d written so much, that she’d almost seemed to drain the reservoir of words, and out of fear and exhaustion, she closed the dam to let the words fill back up. Only, she waited a bit too long and the words became a bit too powerful for her liking, and so the dam remained closed, the water only growing stronger. It felt like if she was going to open the spillways again, it had to be for a momentous occasion, something truly worthy and strong enough to take on the words’ powerful force. However, since the dam had been closed so long, she wasn’t used to the words flowing past anymore and it was hard to will it open. And so the words sat, growing restless and irritable.
There were always reasons why she couldn’t open the dam. Always not enough time, no inspiration, it would have to be for someone else and therefore it would have to be good. She was forgetting something integral to art, to creativity. First and foremost, she had to do it for herself. If no one ever read her work, it didn’t matter in the end. This wasn’t something she did for others. It was something she often shared with others, but it wasn’t for them. It was for her. It calmed her mind, fed her soul and freed her body from the confines of the earth. She was able to release, delve deep inside and truly learn about herself. The words came to her because she had the ability to form them into a momentary beauty before they raced off to spend time with someone else. The words didn’t care what she did with them, they just wanted to become art, somehow and in any way. They didn’t care who saw them or if the work was considered inspirational. The words only wanted to be of use, to be seen and appreciated for their gifts. The gifts of clarity, passion, love, truth, and creativity.
She was the one who felt that all writing had to be spectacular. She was the one closing off the dam, causing the volume of unused words to become overwhelming. It didn’t matter what she wrote, only that she wrote. Opening the dam, even by the smallest margin, would help lessen the pressure. She just needed to sit down, take a breath and let the words flow. The mere acting of shutting off that part of her brain felt like magic. Instantly the words “she picked up her pen and paused” came rushing forth and just like that, as if there’d never been a break in the flow, she was writing.
Hello Acire 🙂 Long time since I visited your blog. And I’m glad I did today since these words of yours inspired me to write something on my own blog at;
https://aatayyab.wordpress.com/2019/06/28/acire-ray-a-writer-picks-up-her-pen/
Stay blessed… 🌹
Thank you for your kind words and for stopping by!!
Hello Acire, it’s good to see you – I was wondering where you had gone. It’s good to see the words flowing again 🙂
BTW – I was trying to click on the name, email website fields to post a comment but I couldn’t I could only tab to them I don’t know why that would be.
Thanks for stopping by! I’ll make sure to check our what’s happening there