Practice
So there’s this book idea that I had once upon a time.
It first came to me ten years ago, when I was going through a hellish time in my life and looking to completely start over. But then, before I ever did anything with it, I completely started over.
Part of this new life included a full-time job, going back to school, and a part-time job to help pay for that experience. Obviously, this didn’t leave me with a lot of free time to dally about with writing any stories. So the idea was put on a shelf in the back of my mind.
Over the past ten years, little snippets have come to me, fragments of scenes or bits of phrases drifting into my consciousness like so much flotsam swirling by on ocean currents occasionally getting swept into the net of my brain. I try to write down everything that pops up this way, but I haven’t ever figured out what to do with it.
Lately I’ve had the urge to try to piece it all together, but I have no idea where to begin. I’ve jotted things down in a half-dozen different notebooks or on countless scraps of paper, on the backs of envelopes or the bottoms of grocery lists. I haven’t exactly been keeping them in order or in a file or anything that even resembles some sort of organization. Point of fact, I have no clue where all of them are.
Let’s not discount too that many of these I wrote down almost a decade ago, when I was young and rife with melodrama. What bits and pieces I have found have mostly made no sense or, worse still, have been complete rubbish.
Then there’s the next, and possibly biggest, problem: Writer’s Block. Not just in the standard “I have no inspiration” variety, but in the “I don’t know how to write anymore” strain of the disease. It’s been many years since I’ve written anything other than a term paper, and even those have been a year off now.
Once in school, I stopped writing anything that wasn’t homework, and once I graduated and didn’t have to do that anymore, I stopped writing altogether. D maintains that I’m just out of practice, but when I sit down and try to write anything, it ends up being such shit that I’m embarrassed to even try anymore.
Which brings us to this blog…
I haven’t written anything here in ages, and didn’t know that I ever would. One day, out of the blue, the previous entry came to me while I was washing dishes. It’s not much, and I’m still convinced it’s utter shit, but I typed it up anyway and it’s there – proof of an effort, if nothing else.
At this point, I doubt anyone will be reading anything I write here except for me. This site’s been defunct for so long now that I’m sure no one even checks it anymore. Maybe that’s a good thing though. Truth be told, I’m not sure that anything I could write right now would be worth human consumption in any format. However, it’s a starting point.
I don’t know how often I’ll actually write here, or even what I’ll write about, but I’m determined to at least try. I guess we’ll see if I’ve really lost whatever tiny bit of talent I might have had or if I’m just out of practice. Until I learn that, I won’t know if anything will ever come of this pipe dream of a book idea.
