Will I Ever Read or Write Again?
When you try your best but you don't succeed, and that is okay Coldplay.
Even as I sit here and look at this meme [Carrie Bradshaw voice], I can’t help but wonder… will she ever read or write again?
I am sitting in front of my computer and am struggling to write this very post. It should speak volumes about the type of person I am—a weak-willed one. Of course, I jest, but I cannot help but think of all the blank documents I have opened, the growing pile of books I want to read, or in my case, the growing pile is the slowly depleting memory of my Kindle as I request yet another book from the library that I keep delaying the delivery date on. I would say it is funny considering I finished my degree in journalism and how I managed to finish an assignment on time at all in a field so deadline-oriented while millions of lives (my editors) were hanging in the balance, still astounds me to this very day.
I would commit myself to join buddy reads because my brain thought surely that if I am reading with a friend, it will motivate me to keep to a consistent reading schedule to discuss our thoughts and feelings on the novels we chose. It would start strong until, somewhere along the way, I find myself setting the book aside before picking it up again weeks later to pick up where I left off, only to discover that your best friend has finished a book trilogy in the amount of time it took me to read one book. (This is a formal apology to my best friend, Elif @theturkishrug. I love you and thank you for bearing with me)
The above-pictured meme is an image I often have found myself struggling to do. It's funny. The truth behind it is as painful as being knocked out by a red kickball in fourth-grade gym class. You see it coming and just accept your fate.
Reading and writing have been a fundamental part of myself from such a young age that really I could never picture myself not doing one or the other. But, of course, there are times when I get such great bursts of muse that I find myself writing a thousand words in just a couple of hours or that one fateful night in 2017 when I wrote five consecutive chapters of my novel. However, then there will be times like the year of 2019 where I read a total of maybe 3 books the entire year, and after completing the first draft of my novel at the end of 2018, I did not open the file containing my manuscript for an entire calendar year. (Please hold your applause).
Sometimes I come across a novel that I become so completely swept away with that I read it within two days of starting it. Still, then on the opposite side, I would find myself picking up multiple books and stop reading at about twenty pages in only to never look at it again. I have tried many methods to encourage reading and writing, like being pickier with my reading selection, creating playlists that put me in the mood to write or set me in my character’s mind, blocking out time to write, and watching movies and shows for inspiration. Sometimes you want to do it, and you just can’t. It isn’t a bad thing. Hell, I cannot say I am the first one to experience this. It has always brought me a great deal of comfort when I read interviews from my favorite authors or creators who talk about their struggles.
I have had plenty of long-winded conversations with my friends who are artists and creatives much like myself. All of us seemed to find a great deal of understanding that we aren’t alone out here when it comes to creating art. In fact, we often find that we are struggling with some version of our biggest critic: ourselves.
I can’t even begin to count how many times I have gotten in my own way. All the time, I would churn out a paragraph during a painful bout of writer's block, cringing at every word I put to the page, eager to hit the backspace button and remove it from existence. I began writing things down more in notebooks. I wanted to include blurbs of conversations in dialogue or bits of narrative when the muse hit, like when I would be sitting on the subway or even after a particularly vivid dream. When I wrote things down physically, it made it a bit harder for me to get rid of it instead of one swipe of my mouse on my computer. I began listening to audiobooks during the pandemic. I began reading more graphic novels to break up the daunting pages of text that awaited me in long novels. It opened my mind to the vocal and visual parts of storytelling—the predecessor of the written form.
What I can say from this hilarious yet truthful meme is that. It is okay. It is okay to struggle to do both of the things you love, and it is okay if your friend reads 50 books in a year or if you even just read one. Sometimes the muse will be elusive to you, while other times, your muse will grab your hand, and you’ll create a masterpiece. I know that punishing myself for not writing a certain amount or not reading 100 books in a year won’t suddenly make me do it the next. Knowing my limits and being pleasantly surprised when I exceed my own expectations is what matters to me. Telling myself that, hey, it is okay to struggle today. It isn’t going to be this way forever.
Learning not to be my own biggest enemy will always be my biggest hurdle as a creative soul, and for now, I can chuckle at the memes that reflect my inner struggles. So be gentle with yourself, lean in around the community of people who inspire you, and one day those words will flow from your fingers, and the pages of that book you’ve wanted to read will fly by.
Image found from Twitter user: @wthnell_
university has damn near killed reading as a hobby for me - i thank my art history professors who gave us 80 double sided pdfs in the most unintelligible font ever, it was just not fun ;; i've tried so many times to pick up reading again and again, but my brain now connects the act of reading to getting work done so heavily that sometimes it's impossible to even take the first step and open a book. that doesn't stop me from having a stack of unread books that keeps growing though lol anyway!! you got this!! we all do!!!
as the best friend in question,
this is such a comforting post and so many of the things you write here resonated with me for sure. it's always the push-pull of expectations and desire and grounding yourself back to reality and comforting yourself that things are fine! and i'm glad you can find that within yourself as well~