To Learn to Write Again

Written October 2021.

Part of the reason I started this blog was to learn to write again.

Funnily enough, throughout most of 2020, I was on a roll. I worked on a short story, longform fanfiction, started two novels of my own, wrote a blog post a month on either Summer Snowflakes or Verbosity, and progressed in various other projects that I’d had sitting for a while. I wrote 40,000 words during NaNoWriMo and finished the final 10,000 in December. All that while completing my Associates Degree, dealing with constant shifts and changes at work, navigating various problems that come with life, and then all the rest that 2020 held for us in general. Somehow, in all of that, I managed to make writing my refuge; I wrote at least 60,000 words, not even counting all of what I edited, and I was and am extremely proud of that.

Then 2021 happened.

Suddenly, there was no more work to do. I had finished my degree. My job had more or less settled. The problems in my personal life… well, they were there, but there wasn’t much I could actually do about them. I could only wait and see how they turned out.

In that waiting time, I realized I had no idea what to do next.

I tried to write because it seemed like that was what I should do. It was all I’d dreamed of doing during my last year of college, all the writing time that would suddenly emerge once school was out of the way. But when I tried to write, I couldn’t find the point to working on my stories. Even when I could see the word count rising, I couldn’t feel the progress being made. Literally everything just left me feeling exhausted.

I forced myself to revise and polish the short story. I thought it turned out pretty good. I submitted it to an online magazine. They didn’t think it turned out pretty good.

I worked on some poetry, gutted out my soul for one of the pieces, and then sent it out on submission. We’ll see where that goes in a couple of months.

Now NaNoWriMo is nearly upon us, and as I try to plan for it, my mind runs a blank. When I sit down to write, I feel as though I don’t even know how to do it anymore. Like I don’t know how to start and if I did start, I wouldn’t know where to go after the first step. I feel as though I have to start over from the beginning and relearn writing all over again, maybe find a whole new way of doing this thing that I used to love like nothing else.

For the moment, I’m giving it a rest. I have a plan for some new things I want to start in 2022, but I decided to kind of take the rest of this year off. I’m rereading old stories, working on this blog, and absorbing lessons about writing the way I used to. If I compete in NaNoWriMo, it will be purely for fun with no requirements and expectations attached. Maybe somewhere in all of that, I’ll find the story that’s meant to be mine and learn how to write once again.

~~~

P.S.: I did end up doing NaNoWriMo… sort of. I’m trying to finish the stories I started last November with a goal of doing just 100 words in each of them per day. So far, so good. And we’ll see how it goes from there. 😊

Have you ever felt like you had to start over with something you loved? What are your goals for NaNoWriMo? Have any other plans to end out the writing year? Always love hearing from you, and I will see you in the comment section.