a writer who's not writing

on surviving the slow, silent killer that is writer's block

artwork by Masha Bogatova

On Monday morning, I lug myself out of bed and drag my feet all the way to the bathroom with the kind of exhaustion that settles into your bones like winter. I make accidental eye contact with myself in the mirror, something I try not to do before I’m fully awake and as a result, fully human. My gaze lingers there for a moment, taking in the soft shadows under my eyes, the slight puffiness that reveals my disoriented sleep schedule. She’s disappointed. Not even awake for five full minutes yet, and my reflection is already reluctant to go on with the rest of her day. I roll my eyes at her, a force of habit, and go on with my routine. 

I’ve eaten my breakfast and had some coffee, but I’ve also poured myself a second cup. The ceramic mug warms against my palms like a promise. I carry it to my desk where I’m meant to be writing and studying all day, although “meant to be” carries so much expectation it almost hurts. Once I sit down, I scan my surroundings and make sure the general area is tidy enough, because like my mom always says, a cluttered desk makes for a cluttered mind. The way mothers pass down these little wisdoms like heirlooms, each generation inheriting the weight of order. 

I stack my current reads on top of each other, move them to the corner of the surface, wipe away any dust particles around me, and every time I almost begin writing, I notice a crumb in between letters on my keyboard, or my hands suddenly feel really dry and I have to go grab the hand lotion from all the way upstairs, or my coffee’s gotten cold and I have to reheat it. The microwave hums like it’s laughing at me. Conveniently enough, something keeps coming up every time I’m about to write, until I realize I’m just stalling because I don’t actually have anything to say. 

Finally, I’ve come face to face with the reality that the well of words inside of me really does run dry every now and then, and now is one of those times. I’ve already come to terms with not having written a full song since December, but my excuse was at least I’m still writing essays, a bargain with myself that now feels empty. How is it that sometimes there are weeks on end where I can continue to write without ceasing, coming up with new topics to dwell on and discuss one after the other, and other times I am unable to say anything at all? These moments are the most embarrassing and vulnerable for writers, because our entire brand relies on containing endless streams of thought. What happens when the endlessness reveals itself to be a fallacy and has an end after all? It feels like being exposed as a fraud, in the most intimate way possible.

Being a writer is like being in love: you never truly believe you deserve the title. You never quite become comfortable with calling yourself one, at least not fully. When someone asks what you do, you hesitate, even for just a millisecond, before saying I’m a writer, and even that is accompanied by the body language of a person riddled with uncertainty. A shy smile and a light shrug, silently communicating yeah, I know, it’s dumb with one look, because even you’re not completely convinced that what you’re doing can be qualified as real. Too often I feel like a child playing pretend, even though there have been countless nights hunched over my laptop until past midnight and too many days spent writing in booths at bookstore cafés until I look up from my screen and it’s already dark out. I’m proud of the work I create, but when someone asks what I do, there’s always that sudden and small yet resilient nagging in the back of my brain that flips a switch to make me feel otherwise.

So when the drought comes and you have nothing to say, you feel even less legitimate and even more foolish calling yourself a writer. I stall even more, switching from Times New Roman to Garamond to Arial back to Times New Roman, adjusting the line spacing from single to double to one and a half, as the cursor blinks at me mockingly.

I get up to watch myself in the bathroom mirror again. There’s something about the compulsion to look at myself during a time of crisis, as if my own reflection is capable of providing an answer that my mind can’t. It’s also the reason why I take photos of myself crying, I think, along with showing myself how ridiculous I look so that I’ll stop. But I guess mainly, I look at my own reflection to feel a sense of dialogue with myself. Either way, I look the same as this morning. I lean in close enough so that my breath fogs the glass, and from way up close, my pores look like tiny wells, all of them empty too.

I stand there for a few minutes, wasting time, and I think about how even this self-examination, albeit spurred on out of procrastination, feels more authentic than any writing I can produce right now. How do I explain that I spent six hours today writing and rewriting the same sentence seventeen times before deleting it entirely? That I’m beginning to wonder if I ever really had anything to say or if I just got lucky a few times and fooled everyone, including myself? Never mind about explaining it to someone else — how do I myself accept the fact that this is my reality right now and somehow be okay with that?

Last week, I found my old diary I’d started exactly ten years ago now. Reading it felt like opening a time capsule, finding all of these crystallized moments I’d genuinely forgotten about: the will-they-won’t-they of an old crush and I, how it felt like the end of the world when I didn’t do well on a math test, an exact description of the layout of a room where I had met a cute boy when I was fifteen. With how separated I feel from that version of myself now, it almost felt like reading about someone else’s life. She wrote about everything and nothing at all, with no agenda except to scrawl down what it felt like to be alive in that moment. Sometimes, I feel like I’m still her, like part of me will be her forever. While that may be true, I can’t exactly go back to that kind of innocence, can I? 

What does it mean to be a writer who’s not writing? How do you write when you have nothing to say? I guess I’ve started writing about the nothing itself, like I am right now. Maybe writing nothing is still writing. Like how silences in the middle of a song still constitute as music. I’m writing paragraph after paragraph about what it feels like to not be able to write, the restlessness in my fingers, all the creative ways I’ve attempted to stall, how I’ve reorganized my desk three times today just to feel like I’m being productive. The strangest part of it all is, I'm writing right now…about not writing…about having nothing to say. Maybe that’s just it: when you have nothing to say, write about the nothing. 

I know creativity isn’t linear, that it occurs in cycles, just like everything else in nature, but that’s not very comforting to think about when you’re left with empty hands and an even emptier mind. But is this what the dry spells are for? Not for torture or self-doubt, but to empty ourselves out? I guess sometimes, there’s simply nothing left to take and all you can do is wait, accumulate, and become full. You just write about having nothing to write about, until suddenly without realizing, it’s happening: you’re writing again.

afterword

[things I love these days + what I’ve been up to]

• I have been on somewhat of a binge watching grind throughout this writer’s block. I’ve watched all of Severance and I’m now caught up to speed. I’ve also started watching (and have been binging) Abbott Elementary, because you guys know I loooooove a good mockumentary sitcom. I love Gregory. I’m on the most recent season right now, but not quite caught up to the latest episodes yet. But it’s definitely a new favorite show of mine.

• I wrote an essay with one of my best friends,

  sarah cucchiara
  (in the spirit of Galentine’s) for Valentine’s Day! If you haven’t read it, here it is:

  an ode to the hopeless romantics

• Stationary biking! I’ve recently discovered another form of movement I enjoy besides dancing. I’ve been trying to do 10 miles every day, which, at the speed I do it, takes me about forty minutes to almost an hour. Nothing crazy. It also helps (in terms of motivation) that I don’t let myself watch my shows unless I’m on it.

• The new bookshelves in my room. I used to have two ladder shelves in different corners of my room, but they were taking up way too much space, so I now have these bad boys above my desk:

• My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante — I finished this book recently and I loved it so much. You can read my Goodreads review here! I’m starting the next book, The Story of a New Name, very soon, right after I finish up with Swing Time by Zadie Smith (which I’m still loving) because reading multiple books at once is sort of stressful to me. I also started letting myself watch the first season of the HBO My Brilliant Friend show, since I finished the first book!

• A miscellaneous list, just to wrap things up: redecorating and reorganizing, sparkling flavored water (specifically orange flavor), Slow Dance by Clairo, bookstores, being trusted, driving in the rain, serif fonts, hazelnut coffee creamer, getting good news, washi tape that my friend designed, season 2 episode 4 of Severance, sister sleepovers, waking up with my bangs perfect, Wildflower cases, three-hole punches (and subsequently, putting papers I just three-hole punched into a fresh binder).

  

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