This. I want to do this. I want very much to do this. But the Horror of the Blank Page–the Horror of the Idea of the Blank Page–has had me under its spell for so effing long that I don’t know if I remember how to write any more. There’s a voice in my head saying It doesn’t matter. Just apply. Promise yourself you’ll write two short stories—that you’ll write something—in time for the application deadline, and that you’ll send it in. Just write. It doesn’t matter. Just write.
The sound of that voice had me curled up in a small ball in my office, my forehead sinking slowly through the desk, for a long minute. A second voice assures me that Charybdis sang a song like that, and I don’t know who to trust. The act of putting this into words scares the hell out of me. The idea that I am putting it on the blog for people to see scares me more. I always swore to leave this particular drama out of the blog. What if everything is gone?
I want to be there. I don’t know what I’m going to do next.
UPDATED: Link in paragraph one tweaked so you can tell what I’m talking about more readily.
Karen
Writing is frightening, or rather, the possibility of writing something and finding out it’s inferior to your expectations is frightening. But the thing I find most frightening of all is a regret. What if you can’t write anything? Well, unless we’re living in a world written by Stephen King, I doubt you’re completely incapable of writing anything at all. What if you write something and it’s bad? Well, then you know you need to improve. What if you apply for the workshop and you don’t get in? Well, at least you tried and you’re only out $25. However, what if you don’t do anything? Well, then you’ll never know. To me, that sounds the most awful of any possibility.
I realize that this is advice coming from someone who knows neither your nor your writing very well (yet we’re engaged! 🙂 and is, in addition, just some kid with a single published credit to her name working an editing job rather than have the guts to try writing anything herself, so I wouldn’t blame you for brushing it off. Nonetheless, it seems to me a warm, funny, intelligent person such as yourself would be capable of producing a fairly brilliant work of short fiction, at the very least. But you’ll never know if you don’t try. Fear is a silly thing to let stop you from trying.
Sari
IYOSP Slogan
“Do more in 04”
Live it.
Jamey
Ahem. You ARE writing. On a regular basis, in this blog. I think it’s good. I’m very picky. Fear not. You’ll have a grand time at the workshop, and if you don’t apply, you’ll spend that week biting your cuticles.