Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Insecure Writer's Support Group

It's the first Wednesday of the month and time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group post. Thanks again to Alex J. Cavanaugh and his wonderful co-hosts for hosting this outlet for writers every month! So here's my insecurity for December . . . 


I’m sorry for my recent absence from blogging. I found out at the beginning of November – right after the last IWSG post in fact – that a friend of mine from college passed away. Death is always hard, especially when someone dies long before their time. But I found this death particularly hard to cope with upon learning that my friend Bethany had been murdered, and that the man responsible for her death was her husband of two months.

It’s times like this when I struggle to keep writing. It’s hard to sit down at a computer or pick up a pen when there are so many other things on my mind. Remembering my friend alive and happy. Wondering if she suffered in the end. And so I simply stopped trying. Of course, I did my best to keep working on my current manuscript. I even made some progress, for which I’m grateful. But I stopped blogging, and I stopped writing in my journal, something which I typically do three or four times a week.

But a month has passed now and my friend and family have encouraged me to try revisiting my old writing routines. In some ways it helps to get it all down and exorcise my sadness via writing. And in other ways it feels like I have to drag each word out in a way I’m not used to. This blog post has taken me easily twice as long as normal to complete.

Perhaps my insecurity for the month isn’t an insecurity so much as a hope that writing will start feeling more natural again – and a fear that it won’t.