About a year and a half ago, I stopped writing.
I stopped writing because a friend of mine had critiqued some of my work in what I felt was an overly harsh manner. This might have just been my anxious mind exacerbating the problem, but at that moment, I truly felt like the thing I had worked and honed throughout my life meant nothing. That I had studied and wrote and read and edited and laughed and cried over my own words, only to fail. I dropped the story I had written a hundred plus pages for. I stopped dreaming up imaginary worlds; quit scrabbling for the poetic fragments floating through my mind in an effort to write them down to tangible form. I let myself languish. I let my writing die.
I realize now that this was a mistake. My friend’s opinion doesn’t necessarily meant that they’re right. I’m not a bad writer. I know deep down inside that I’m meant to write, to express through words how beautiful and terrible the world can be. That’s all I’ve wanted to do. So I’m going to keep trying to write, starting now. It’s going to be a hard and painful slog back up through the mire of easy writing, where I can flow from pen to brain to mouth effortlessly. But I can’t let it die - I’d be letting a part of myself die.
So forget the barbed words and remember the sweet ones. Keep writing. Keep being the writer you know and love to be. It’s okay. You can do it.
