Sunday, April 19, 2009

I Hate Writing

Oh...I just had the greatest conversation with my neice, Jenny, on the topic of filling our creative void, finding our creative voice.
I told her (in confidence of course) that I am a really good writer, but that I hate writing.
Jenny said, "I never knew that."
"No, it's true," I said. "It hurts me to write. It hurts my shoulders and my hands. It hurts my neck...Once, my husband called me at home while I was working on my master's thesis. He called me at 9 a.m. to ask me how it was going. I told him I was stuck on this one idea--I don't remember now what it was--and that I had been pounding away on this one sentence for, like, an hour."
I told Jenny that he called me two hours later to check on me and I had only written two sentences since then and I was really no closer to finishing my thought than I had been when he called before.
"I get all sweaty," I told Jenny. "I bite the inside of my lip until it's raw. I'm really good at it, I told her, but it hurts."
It's not like painting, I told her, where I enjoy the process (sort of), where there is a logical progression from thinking and looking to sketching and drawing, then (heavens open) and color is applied, light is brought to paper and heaven is brought to earth.
"Writing's not like that," I told her. "It's excruciating."
But I am a good speller, a very good word picker, and an excellent orderer of words . I can do it, it's just very painful.
Jenny said, "I never knew that. That must be terrible."
It is. Trust me, it is.

2 comments:

Jenny Stevning said...

Keep writing! I love your entry. Don't forget that Resistance. You once mentioned you were straight, but not narrow. Could you tell me more about that?

Bonnie McCririe Hale said...

Oh, that Jenny...she knows how to give a person a poke in the creative rib!