The Writer's Curse

A Stream of Consciousness

For a week or so I have been opening up Substack, writing a few paragraphs and then deleting what I just wrote. I do this at least once a day, twice if I’m having an especially rough go of it. I’ll feel a wave of inspiration or have a fleeting thought about something, and then find myself totally put off by the entire thing. At first I was deeply frustrated, shaking my fist at the sky and cursing myself for even thinking I could write long term. However, once I stopped being dramatic I got curious. It really can’t just be, “I have writer’s block and I can’t write so I should just wait until it passes”, can it? Is this a flop era? Am I cooked and if so, why?

The first issue is the desire to impress. I have touched upon this in the past in my essay “The Scholarly ‘Pick Me’”. To summarize, from a young age I have wanted to impress people with my writing. To feel like the smartest or the most insightful and to have people go “oh wow, that’s a woman who reads the good books and understands them”. To collect metaphorical head pats for my work that I can turn into duct tape for any cracks that have formed in my ego over the years. The problem is, writing to impress an audience you don’t know and cannot control is so incredibly foolish I can hardly put it into words. It’s how you burn yourself out before you ever even do anything. Fictional expectations so big it makes everything you write or think look small. This is a massive issue for me, despite me being all too keenly aware of it ( I am aware of all of my flaws, doesn’t stop them from ‘flawing’). While this is a compelling reason for my on again, off again block, I just don’t buy it’s the only one.

Maybe it’s the fact that there’s just too damn much to talk about. Seriously, I am overwhelmed with the amount of things I learn in a day and how many takes I have about each of them. A perfect example is the racist and misogynoiristic backlash directed at Francesca Amewudah-Rivers for the sin of being cast opposite Tom Holland in a production of “Romeo and Juliet”. The treatment she has received has been devastating to watch as the bullying and harassment has sustained itself for months. When I set out to write about this I found myself going off about the unfair treatment that black women in the performing arts receive. But then I found myself remembering a practicum I wrote about the tense existence of black women on the internet and my post shifted entirely. Of course, until I wanted to focus on the immense featurism that exists specifically in the black community as I couldn’t help but notice the amount of black people specifically that were harping about having “representation that’s decent looking”. We also can’t forget the sheer racism of existing on sites like ‘X’ and before long, the newsletter was so jumbled that I had to scrap it outright. For just one topic I found myself presented with multiple angles to approach the subject and no discernible way to select any. This is the bane of my existence and happens to me so much. The “Pay in 4 to Personal Debt Pipeline” essay I wrote took over a month because of it.

I also can’t discount life happening. Literally just living your own life everyday gets in the way of writing so much. I have to work, which cuts into my writing time like you wouldn’t believe. I have to go outside and touch grass and that can take hours of my time every week. Between family, friends, and events what time left is there to just sit in your room and keep the door shut. But isn’t this preferable? I think so but what does this mean for the newsletter, or my play, or my poor neglected book? Ultimately I have no solution. I can’t even play at one as I really have no idea. It’s rare that I don’t have some idea of a solution at the end of a newsletter but I’m letting myself come up blank for the time being.

Ultimately, I will continue to write and hopefully worry less about the response. Maybe, I’ll worry less about the process as well. Actually yeah let’s just put “worry less” down as a goal for the year. A mid year resolution.

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