After a stretch of time that is far too long for me to happily admit, I am here! Ready to write about the ups and downs of writing. The divots and cracks of creativity.
The truth is, I tried to write this article months ago. To be specific, the last edit time shown on the draft is May 15th. Every time I went to write, I felt frustrated. I worried that everything I wrote just sounded like something I have said before. The repetitiveness felt unimportant. So, I wrote a whole article basically talking about how annoying and repetitive I am. I hated it and didn’t even really look at it again until now.
And, after just rereading it, I can say that it wasn’t that bad. I probably could’ve gone ahead and published this slightly depressing piece of non-fiction and moved on with my life. However, instead, it was left untouched for months until today, when I read it. Then, I read all the other Re-Punking the Muse articles I’ve written, and I pulled out all the journals near me to reread the writing in those. And, although some of them might dabble in similar topics, they each, at their very root, are saying something different. And, even if I was beating a dead horse, at least I was creating something instead of holding my brain under a swamp of self-doubt, afraid of being comparatively unoriginal.
The original muse understands this swamp of self-doubt. I’m sure most creative people do. When we delve too deeply into this swamp, we start to ask ourselves the heart-sinking question, “Why?”
A question that has been haunting me.
The muse asked himself this, saying, “So why am I sitting here on a Friday afternoon (past my deadline, damn it!) punking away when I could be working out at the gym or looking for a much needed day job or enjoying a bit of pornography or cruising a dating site or walking up a hill or (please) climbing back into bed and falling asleep.”
He answers his own question, saying, “It’s what I do.”
It is what I do, and when I reread and rediscover my passion, I realize that (and this might come off as too arrogant) I can do it pretty well. Even if that weren’t the case, writing helps me when I need it the most, and that should be enough for me to keep doing it.
So, if it is what you do, keep doing it.
And I will do the same, meaning I will write again soon (definitely sooner than it has been).
Natilee Shock is writing into Charlsie-Kern Kruger’s column The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse as a way to hold herself accountable creatively. Read the whole column here.