I Miss Brave

I finished crocheting a scarf that I am going to give my mom for Christmas. It only took two days to do, and so tonight, as I was watching Bag of Bones, I started a new one. I am not sure who I am going to give this one to yet, but hopefully they will like the light blues and greens and grays that make up the yarn. I also read a lot today, and I am almost through with the first Vampire Diaries book, the one that contains The Awakening and The Struggle. I am pretty sure that I read these books when I was younger, I was pretty sure that I had read everything that L.J. Smith ever wrote, but so far I am sorry to say that I like the show better than the books - that hardly ever happens. 

Why am I recounting all of these daily banal activities? Because I am still not writing. Today, I lay in bed with my laptop for hours, looking at (probably literally) hundreds of books on Amazon, trying to figure out how it is possible that so many people have already done what I want to do so badly, and to think furthermore that I could probably do it better than some, if not a lot of them. 

I guess, maybe, not finishing my NaNoWriMo story is hitting me harder than I had originally let on. I told so many people about it this year, I feel like I let so many people down, but really, I let myself down. Lately I've been all about doing and finishing things that I say I want to do, and this is one of the things that I totally bombed at, and it was one that was important to me. It's going to take some time, I think, for me to get my groove back. For me to get the confidence back to begin something new and not question myself too much about things.

I have to close my door. I have to close my door.

There's this author, Nova Ren Suma, who has a wonderful blog on writing, and last month she did a blog series on "What Inspires You" and a bunch of other writers share their thoughts on writing and inspiration, and on what keeps them going when they feel like giving up - all those things that "aspiring" writers like myself just eat the hell up. Veronica Roth, who wrote Divergent, one of the best books I've read this year HANDS DOWN, added her two cents, and she said something at the end of her post that I couldn't stop thinking about, so I just had to go and look it up again to share it here.

Writing isn’t everything—a life is much more than that. But for me it’s a little microcosm. It’s a safe place to try to make life better, to gather up my strength for the times when I step away from the computer. And sometimes, when I do, I’m a little braver than before.

She gets it. This is ME. I feel like people who are writers and bloggers live completely different lives than everyone else in the world. We make our own worlds, and additionally we are part of this other, bigger world of the blogosphere where people read our words and know our names and think of us as friends or aquaintances even though we've never met. People who don't have that - people who don't have Twitter followers that ask how we are and care about what we're doing - they don't get it, and it's hard explaining it. 

I feel like I have two lives, two completely separate lives - one of them I live in the world - I go to work, I have dinner with friends, I spend time with family.. And then, in the other life, I write, and I think, and I create, and I am constantly shocked and thrilled when I see that people actually give a shit about what I have to say. It's amazing, and it's something that is SO HARD to share with others, the way it makes me feel. 

But see, without writing, I am just this lost thing, that's how I feel right now. I'm just puttering about in my little virtual world without a ground to stand on, without characters to keep me company, without adventure to find. I need to start writing again, something big and significant and GOOD, to be able to be brave again, to be able to get out of bed in the morning with a smile on my face instead of weeping as my feet hit the floor.