the words don’t come easy

Writing is easy they say; just put one word after the other. It’s like walking, but with added punctuation.

The problem is that not writing is easier, and shifting between a state of not-writing and writing is surprisingly difficult. Anyone who says ‘just write’ is already writing, so it’s easy for them. They don’t understand, or have forgotten. Or both.

That’s why I’m writing now here just to get into the habit, those first faltering steps writing drivel purely to get into the habit again. It’s not good, it’s not pretty. But it’s words, one after the other.

I’m walking again.

Scritch scritch goes the pen

There’s something oddly satisfying about writing. The therapeutic charms are well known and well documented. Writing is a means of letting out what is locked within, a way of both releasing what is pent up, as well as of giving them an odd kind of permanence, both giving freedom and pinning down at the same time. Caged and uncaged.

I haven’t written for oh so long, and I miss it. I miss the sound of the keys, the pressure of keyboard against fingertips. I miss the focus, the very act of creation – but that is perhaps the wrong word. Nothing is created as the words are already there. The writer transforms existing thought into pixels or lines of ink. Writing is not creation, it’s an act of transformation, of re-creation.

It is a part of me I have denied for too long.

I think it’s time to let it out again.