Write < Written
Writer's block isn't something where you just take two and wake up in the morning healed. It's one of the most frustrating maladies I've experienced because there is no fix except to write.
And so write I do.
But all it lands me is no less than a baker's dozen first paragraphs. Some have the makings of something good and some will never see the light of day. They're the blathering younger sister of something half good, and nothing but good should do.
The problem is that I've been coasting by on half good for the past few months and so I don't even know where to start but with the blathering younger sister. (No offense if you're the blathering younger sister. I am too. I'm also the bossy older sister, though, so there's no winning in my case.)
I tried to look back and see where it all started going downhill and I've tracked it back to July, my writing hiatus. That hiatus was great for my soul, but the half-good writing that's come after it has been anything but great (or good). There were a few keepers in there, but let's be real for a minute here: I can't remember what they were, so the chances of you remembering are fairly slim. The only really good piece in there landed me a pile of emails unknowingly quoting our old friend Clive, "Friendship is born when one looks at the other and says, 'You too! I thought I was the only one.'" But here's the truth, that piece was raw and real and written in a moment of honesty that comes rarely to my soul.
I want that back.
I want to take the preach out of my write and just write.
But I'm afraid.
I don't even know what I'm afraid of. I think I'm most afraid of being known, not heart-known, but person known. I'm afraid of being the girl with the blog who writes. I hate that person because that person isn't me. That person is just a slice, one slice and 15 minutes of my day. All the rest of the time is the real me and I have a host of people who will tell you that I turn a pretty phrase, but I live one foot in front of another, one broken heart after another, one frustrating sigh after another.
A writer friend sent me an email a few months ago, "So now I'll tell you a secret because your words are too lovely, in those times when you unfurl yourself and write wildly, to keep caged. The secret is that there is no silencing them, the people who want to consume you, who think your words are an invitation to nibble at your flesh and carve and mold you until you've suited what they want you to be, until they can fall down on their knees and worship the icon of You that is nothing like you..."
So I need you to know this, but mostly I want to not care about whether you need to know or want to know, but I want you to know that sometimes I want to crawl into a hole, bury my head in my arms, and hibernate for the long haul. I have spent much of my life desperate to be known and really known, but I care less and less about this. I long for heaven more today than ever before because there there is no name to be made or had. There is no icon of wisdom and no need to turn a pretty phrase. There is Only One.
January 2012 was supposed to be another hiatus, but I need this writer's block to take a backseat and the only way I know to do that is to write it back there until it's limping along behind the ride of this page on the web.
So write, unfurled, write wildly, uncaged, until it is written and always point to the real Author—this is January 2012. Because this fraud makes her way plagiarizing the real Creative source, but she wants more than anything for Him to get all the credit.