Everyone has a filter on their brain, with varying degrees of effectiveness. Some people have a filter that lets practically everything through and say everything that is on their mind, whether or not it is interesting, appropriate, or kind. Others have a filter that must be clogged or something, because although they stop themselves from saying things that don't need to be said, sometimes they just don't talk much at all. Sometimes I think I fit into the latter group.
I think my mental filter is a bit overactive, because sometimes I feel I just don't have much to say. I think a lot, sure, but most of the time I find that while what is in my brain is interesting to me, it probably isn't interesting or relevant to others. So I sit in silence a lot of the time, not knowing what to say unless someone else brings up a topic of conversation. I've trained myself to do this so well (although really, I don't think it's a good thing) that now, I believe, it has trickled into my writing life.
In high school, I had story ideas bouncing around in my head ALL THE TIME. Sometimes I would just have to leave what I was doing and just type a page or two until all the inspiration was spent up. What I wrote wasn't always good, but that's the thing-- first drafts just aren't. The important thing is to get something written. You can go back and make it pretty later.
Now, though, I have to try to set deadlines for myself to get any writing done. At the beginning of the summer, I made a goal with my friend Laura to have something done, yes, DONE, by the end of summer. That was in April or May... now it's mid-August, and I have practically nothing to show. I even scaled back the goal to 25 typed pages, but all I have are 3 (which I wrote before I decided to take the story in a completely different direction).
So just like much of the country, my summer was besieged by drought, only my drought was a drought of words.
I love words-- reading them, hearing them, reciting them. Even reading people's comments in message boards, the cadence of their sentence structure. I wish I still had Hamlet's whole "To be or not to be" soliloquy memorized ( had to do it in high school English) just because the words are fun to say. I guess I'm saying this because I want to clarify that this summer was not entirely devoid of words. I devoured them, as usual, reading books and blog posts and whatever. I just didn't produce many of them.
I think maybe, just maybe, I needed a break. Maybe I needed time to just let life soak in, to sit back and observe and think and let some ideas marinate. Hopefully, though, the floodgates will open again soon, because I want to bond with words again by shaping them out of thin air, molding them into various shapes until I find one that just fits. We'll see how it goes.
