Hello hello everyone. I had somewhat of an epiphany the other day about my own writing and wanted to share.
If you read my post about spring, you probably remember me talking about how I had written a poem and was feeling generally positive about my personal writing even though I have been doing nothing but cranking out close to 2,000 words a day for my day job for the past two weeks.
In August, after I defended my thesis (hell, even before then, pretty much right after I turned in the draft), I pretty much completely stopped writing. I am (a little) ashamed to say it, but I have written only one story of consequence since. (It was a pretty good story, but I still don’t know what I’m going to do with it.) This lack of productivity was really starting to grate my gums before I started my job.
But now that I’m writing more and more each day, even though it’s nothing exciting or even very creative, I’m still putting words one right after the other and, somehow, I have the desire to write my own stuff now.
Even though the metaphor may be stale, I think the “stretching a muscle” analogy applies here. I’m exercising my glutes during the day but biceps at night — or something to that effect. You get the picture.
Last week I wrote a poem inspired by a stretch of cement that I passed on my way to the train station in the morning. It’s kind of a personal piece about my life and choices up til this moment. Is the poem good? Hell no. The point is, I wrote it. I wrote something. And since then, I’ve scribbled down a few more things I want to write about or the beginnings of poems.
The burnout from thesis writing and defending was real for me. Maybe not everyone is affected so harshly. Maybe I’m just lazy and blaming my laziness on the thesis issue. Whatever it is, I’m just happy that I seem to be getting back into the swing of things.
Liz Makes Stuff 