Brooks Jensen once wrote that finishing a photograph was the hardest task a photographer would face. The perfect picture in your imagination was just that – in your imagination. The reality was the flawed print on your table.
It’s the same for writing.
I have never been an open person; been called introspective by some and a loner by the less diplomatic. A year ago however, I drew into myself. At around the same time my writing output plummeted.
There were a few major causes for this shift, but I’ll focus on the terrible “toos”. The thoughts I wanted to express were too personal, too angry, too confused… I had too little time. I found it too hard to write a thoughtful, coherent entry. Every time I sat down I faced the reality that the fragments I’d penned in my head, the emotion I’d felt as I honed them, translated badly to the page. It’s one thing to construct the right sentence – it’s another to put the right sentence in the right context in a coherent entry – one with a beginning, middle and end.
And so, I stopped writing.
At first it was the personal entries – the hardest to write.
…
Then the musings – thoughts on events and people.
…
Until all that was left was the factual.
I have been picking up the pieces ever since.