Today I cannot write
I have had the entire day to be creative today. I've had time, all the housework was done, all the tasks and the admin and the little bits were taken care of - in short, I've had the entire day to just sit here and create and work and write and be who I really want to be.
And nothing.
Nothing.
Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.
Nothing came out. I have a few projects that need attending, and well, I tried doing something for each and every one of them, and I just could not. It is now 20 past 5 in the afternoon, and I have done nothing.
Which is gutwrenchingly and eye-pull-out-inlgy frustrating. I've got so much I could be doing! I've got a novel, I've got several film projects, I've got a festival, I've got friends who could do with a friendly word or a call or attention. I've got business relationships that could do with an update. I could be querying, I could be WRITING!
But I can't.
In one of my books, I write about writer's block, and what it can do to us - how frustrating it is, how mindnumbing it is, how much it hurts. And what can help us get through it. Normally what I turn to when I feel like this is discipline. I force myself to write (ahem... look... I is writing something right now!), even if the thing I'm writing is not the thing I should be writing.
I don't write as a hobby anymore. I used to. This used to be my hobby. This used to be the thing that I do when I have nothing else to do. I don't view it like that anymore. Every single word I put down has a purpose now - so sometimes when I feel like this, I have to go back to pointless writing (not that any art is ever pointless). But the kind of writing I would have done as a child. A silly little fairytale. A fanfic. A scene that is so spicy and smutty that it would make a pornstar blush.
So when I cannot bring myself to do the work, maybe what I need to do is find the play. Not think of this as my job. I have a day off today, clearly, since I can't do my job. So why shouldn't I indulge in some play.
So I'ma post on tumblr (to which I am new, by the way, and I know I'm late but oh well here I am), I'ma write a spicy fanfic, I'ma read some fairytale about goblins and princesses.
Because today I am not a writer. Today I am just me.