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Why I Have Not Written

'If you hear a voice within you say, "You cannot paint", then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.'
- Vincent Van Gogh

For almost a year now, I have been afraid of committing myself to writing. I have not written book reviews, essays, barely even poetry, not so much because I have writers' block, as because I have become so embarrassed with writers in general, myself included. It seems to me that bad writers are always too confident, and too prepared to prop each other up in their inability, and I often worry that the very kindest, enthusiastic supporters of my writing have been doing just this - politely or naively praising my own tired and hysterical junk. My partner writes, he reviews every single film he sees: confidently, plainly, beautifully. It seems to take him no effort at all. I, on the other hand, am positively paralytic when I put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), I might write a sentence, perhaps two, both of which are cringe-worthy, so I resign, and I find other ways to spend my time. Nowadays, I do not even trust myself to use words accurately and this is starting to show in my speech where I am beginning to babble long, banal, apprehensive sentences. It is time that I just wrote, right?
Why do I want to write? That is the pivotal question, and perhaps answering it will give me some much needed motivation. I could be elusive, and reply, 'Why do I want to eat?', but that would be a nonsensical reply, and I want to write with good sense and meaning, actual meaning, rather than gist. I believe that I want to write because writing is the true Pisgah sight; the author isolated by their primary involvement with text, aware that they cannot reap the rewards of the text like a naive reader might, and conscious that, if written well, the text will certainly outlive them. See, there is also terror in that. A text must be more than well-written, it must be transcendent, and it must strike at something recognisable, if not universal, otherwise it is not worth writing! For all that I know and understand the characters I want to propel and compare, how can I be confident? So much hangs in the balance. How to be convincing. How to be artful. How to be clear. How to trust that when someone tells you that you are succeeding they are not, cruelly, just being polite. Once I know all these I will make a fortune writing, not from novels, but friendly-sinister little 'How to...' books. I am, perhaps stupidly, convinced that if I can squeeze out proof that I can write competently - a short story, a novella - my anxieties will finally subside, but there is always the possiblity that I simply cannot write well, isn't there? There is the possibility that I can put sentences two by two, clumsily, and that that is the extent of my power. Writers always say: 'There is no one way to write'. I am quite scared that, for me, there is not one single way that I will be a writer. I might yet have to settle for life as an illustrater, a pity, considering that words are so much better than paint at illustrating anything.
Hopefully, though, this is a start. Here I am, writing again. Hopefully I will write my nerves out to a time where things become a little easier. Now I just have to start writing, and keep it up. I have to admit, it is a start that was bloody well overdue.

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