One Of Those Days

One Of Those Days

Nov 02, 2021

A question just came to me. Just came to me, as I stared into the TV screen. After I successfully finished all the bits and pieces around the house before the afternoon. After I spent the next three hours sitting on the couch, watching videos online I'd seen so many times before. When I'd resigned myself to another day off work that I couldn't take advantage of because I had no creativity.

Could I write about not being able to write?

It's hardly shifting the earth, not exactly pushing me forwards towards the place I want to be, but it's something, I guess. The first draft of my manuscript is collecting virtual dust in the cloud because I can't bring myself to look at it right now. That's been the case since I finished it, weeks ago.

Having that goal of finishing a novel was great. It kept me actively writing - probably trying too hard a lot of the time. Once it was finished I realised I have no idea what to do next other than edit it. Then I realised I had no idea how to edit a 90,000-word book. So here I am.

I started planning my next book in the hope I could structure it a little better than the first one, and maybe get one draft written in under eighteen months this time, but knowing the amount of work needing to be done has stalled that before it's really started.

Questions. Am I a naturally creative enough person to make a dream career out of this? Will I get good enough that people who have never heard of me will want to read what I've done? Does any of it really matter?

Right now, I'd say no, maybe, and who could ever know. I guess that's an improvement. Two years ago, there would be three resounding no's going around and around my head. But I'm doing better now - not 100% - but getting there.

We bought our first house, which is awesome, and because my wife is way more of a get-shit-done-now kind of person than I am, it's well on the way to being our house. The job I couldn't stand last year is actually not so bad, and I got promoted, which is also cool. It's a slow process, and I'll keep going, and maybe there will be some great breakthrough down the road.

For now, the nights are drawing in again, and the temperature drops with every sunrise. I wake up with a chill to look out of the window into darkness. It's been a bright, sunny day today, yet I can't help but sit there and wait, unsafe in the knowledge that the evening will come just a little bit sooner than it did yesterday. And another day passes by. Sorry I haven't been more active, to anyone out there who enjoys reading the poems and stories I've posted so far.

Can I write about not being able to write? I suppose I just have, and it was just as self-loathing and miserable as I expected it to be, which is probably why this is the first behind the scenes-type post I've done. There's plenty more where this came from! Unfortunately, it's just one of those days weeks months.

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