Melancholy Mondays 4: I feel like a writer who doesn't write

I've never called myself a writer, because I simply don't write. I see things online all the time from the Explore Blog, for example, that talk about needing to write write write if you want to improve your writing. They also talk about reading a lot, and I rarely do that, either, it seems. And then there's the runner/writer/photographer guy that lives a few miles away from Glacier View Ranch where I was at who mentioned recently on his blog that his grandpa used to write 1,000 words a day. His grandfather. Which means no typing (or at least much more labor-intensive typing?). I haven't written in my journal for literally months. I bet I'm getting close to a year. I've thought about it several times and dragged it around with me, but apparently introspection is not something I want to record. And I've not blogged much either, let's be for real.

That said, since high school when my papers started making more sense and I started to appreciate the literatures more, I suppose I began to have the smallest wonder whether I were a writer somewhere deep inside. Sometimes I like to imagine I could've been one of those starving poet types: rather emaciated (check), rather melancholy (check), rather a loner (check), rather content to wander the woods (check), or the city (check). Sometimes I imagine the only thing holding me back from that is... that I'm not a starving poet. I don't write.

If I did, maybe I'd be on the long list of poor gaunt souls who committed suicide out of pure inability to contain their art. That's ridiculous and probably disrespectful in a lot of ways, but I said it.

There's something about the written word that is too legitimate to quitimate. And ironically, it's hard to put into words. I suppose that's part of its beauty. When we really come to appreciate some piece of literature, it's often because some dear soul was gifted or worked hard enough to arrive at a way to adhere a few of these word things into some kind of phrase, and those phrases into some kind of thought, and those thoughts into some kind of picture that now has been made into reality from ideas that were only possibilities until then. I don't know.

Relient K is a band that I have a lot of respect for because of their lyrics. I suspect a lot of people would just hear them and shrug them off as bobo and just fun lyrics, and sometimes they are. But often they're extremely well-crafted, and their playfulness is part of that genius to me. I also think of Dr. Seuss and his diligence in perfecting his phrases. I don't remember much from the research paper I did on him my freshman year (i.e., my first senior year) of communications, but that he labored over his works until he could do no more. I've rarely written a poem and gone back to it. Dr. Seuss made it happen. He knew the first time around was to release his inspiration. The rest of the times were for making history.

I guess my point is—or actually I suppose this is kind of an entirely different topic that just relates to this—is that I don't know how to make myself write more. Without forcing it. I guess one just has to flip the switch in the mind and decide. But that feels like forcing it. I want to write because I'm a writer, not become a writer because I write. (But I want to want the opposite of that. Or maybe I'm only at wanting to want to want it.)

And that, my friends, is why my work ethic is not one to emulate. Woe is me.