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Writer Blocked By Mimi Greenwood Knight
Blah! Blah! Blah! I make my living with words and sometimes I get sick of them. Verbs. Tenses. Phrases. Punctuation. Quotation marks. Enough!
I love writing. I do. I love having written. Love editing and rewriting my work. Especially love being read.
I love making money writing. Love the acceptance that comes from selling something I wrote. I love involving my kids in the process.
But sometimes I'm up to here with it. No more words. No more thoughts to express. No more questions to pose, or visual pictures to sketch.
No more writers groups to attend. No more writers' guidelines to follow. No more worrying about word count. No more wondering if there's a better way to say it, to, Show. Don't tell.
Certainly no more rejection letters or suggestions from editors. No more, Does not meet our editorial needs at this time. Good luck placing it elsewhere. Go soak your head. We hate your essay, is what they mean to say.
But who am I kidding? The word is what it's all about. Making someone laugh. Offering camaraderie. Finding the perfect voice and rhythm and that one word with bite.
Crisp, economical prose that the reader has to love because I love it so much myself.
There's that far-too-infrequent e-mail or phone call from a stranger who read something I wrote and had to reach back. That's what it is! All this writing, all these words. It's reaching out. It's reaching in and reaching up then reaching out.
Back to hieroglyphics on cave walls That's what it was about. Reaching. How blessed the man or woman Who can call it a living. Who can do it every day- because you have to do it anyway- then have a couple coins to rub together for his trouble.
It's a love/hate gig, this writing life. I couldn't decide to quit it anymore than I could decide to quit being mother to my four kids or sister to my eleven siblings.
It's a writer I am. And a writer I'll be. For as long as my hand can clutch a pen or peck a key board. As long as I have thoughts and questions and feelings and words to try to- hopefully, possibly, maybe, on a good day- express.
Mimi Greenwood Knight is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to parenting magazines, anthologies and web sites including Parents, Working Mother, American Baby, At-Home Mother, Living, Christian Parenting Today, Campus Life, Homelife, and In Touch. She finds pleasure in helping newer writers get their start. After all, as Anne LaMott says, "All writers are like streams feeding into the same river." http://www.writergazette.com/mimigreenwoodknight.shtml |
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