just do it

by Anna Maria Hansen

I've been struggling to write. More than I'd like to admit.

It feels like my initiative to put words on paper is sapped. Completely gone. It's been months since I've written a poem that I liked. Even longer for a short story. While I clicked open my unfinished, in-desperate-need-of-editing novel about once a week, I just re-read it and occasionally changed a sentence or two.

 

Last week, it got to the point where I began to question my ability to write. Wondering if it was really gone, and if I would get it back. For the third time that week, I had set aside time to write and was simply sitting at the computer, chin cupped in my hands. Blankly staring at a blank text document flashing palely on the screen. Fingers tentatively pecking, I'd punched in two stanzas of a poem that I already hated.

 

It was corny. Like a cheesy, dime-a-dozen Hallmark card. It positively oozed amateur writer.

 

Moody, sullen in my lack of success to have the perfect words snap electricity from my brain to fingertips, I nearly hit the power button to black out my inability to write.

 

No.

Only a day ago I'd said, if you want to be a writer you must write.

 

Okay, prove it. Walk the talk. Write.

I drew a line under those two saccharine stanzas and started again.

write! Please, words, please!

Let me write you!

write! Pencil, do my bidding

I can't fight you.

Write! I can't stand the silence of wordlessness,

wasted on air-conditioned eight-hour days.

I can't stand the silence in my head, restlessness

the laziness that plagues me, endless delays.

Write! I can, I may, I must!

I can't stand this waiting,

this gathering dust.

Write! Fingers, obey!

Move like you used to

fill pages and pages

slashes of ink

that clear my head

to let me think.

Write!

Write!

I can, I know I can.

I may, find the way.

I must, this I trust.

Write!

Write!

Frustration confuses the electricity

between brain and fingers

they falter, they fail, they slow

the thought stays and lingers.

Anger mars the flow of pure creation

scarring each sentence with bitterness

each paragraph crippled with stumbles

each word burned in a mental furnace

Loneliness clutters thoughts with vacancy

paradox and contradictions everywhere

denial blurs borders until I can't tell

fiction from a truth hard to bear.

So write!

Write it out and burn it up!

Tear it, scatter the pieces to the wind!

Don't go away, don't give up.

Write!

Write, please write.

Write, just write.

You know it, you're choking on the dust

you scream I can, I might, I must!

I can write storms and life and wars

heal wounds and scars and death

with the tap of fingers shatter doors

 

So write!

Write away the rust!

You think you can,

you know you must.

I'll write myself a pair of wings

and go flying

I'll write myself a shovel

and start trying

to dig the wealth of words

I'll write myself a map

and do it right away

I'll write myself a lamp

so I can see the way

Write

in words are all things

Write

in words are the wings

Write

in words are the things

that make me

Write

Apart from deleting a couple extra stanzas and lines where I continued to ferociously and persistently order myself to pick up the pen, this is the original. I'm not proud of it and there is no use for it...

Oh yeah, there was. It got me writing. Even if it was just ridiculous word and cadence games, I was writing. I firmly believe that to be a good writer you must write – the good, the bad, the unquestionably terrible – but most of all, the truth. Call it whatever you want, allowing some of the words to run out clears my mind.

I didn't close the computer then.

I started a new text document and wrote a poem that was next to halfway decent. Today, I will write another one, and keep writing until I can write... for writing truly does make me right.