I went to a writers’ group yesterday, one I used to attend every week but have more or less given up on over the last couple of years. I picked up a card and letter to myself which I wrote last year at this time defining my goals for the year. I haven’t opened it yet because I know I won’t have done any of the things I said then – to be honest, I probably realised when I said them that they weren’t going to happen. Next week it will be time to do it all over again, and what will I say?
Why write every day when nothing ever leads anywhere? That is the dilemma I keep wrestling with. Maybe I should define where I want it to ‘lead’, because often that’s taken to mean fame, fortune, book sales, when really I just want it to lead to something I can be proud of producing, to fill the crack in my soul and help me feel good about myself. I used to think that writing every day would lead me to better things, but instead it all feels futile – though, if I’m honest, no more futile than the other things I spend my time on. I guess it hurts more because writing has always felt important to me, a precious thing – I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here, but I guess I’ve always hoped to do something real and worthwhile with it, but instead it seems that however hard I try and however much I do it, I end up just throwing it out there without ever constructing something whole and finished. It’s like an artist who puts a few blobs of paint on the canvas, then the next day starts another canvas with different blobs of paint, and so on ad infinitum without ever creating a complete image.
You can call me ‘talented’, but it’s just a micro-talent, for stringing words together in a pleasing way. The macro-talent of constructing plots and creating characters always eludes me, I’m forever trying to grasp it but can never quite get there – or maybe it’s just that I give up too soon, that is likely knowing how readily I give up on other aspects of life – still, the fact remains that without the ideas, plots and characters, there’s nowhere I can take those words, and so the stack of blobby canvases grows.
Perhaps that’s why I’m more drawn to poetry than fiction – a poem can be just a few stanzas – even a few lines, or a few words. It doesn’t require the same degree of structure and commitment as even a short story. That said, I rarely set out to write a poem – they just come to me, and if they don’t, I can’t force them – but once I start it usually doesn’t take too long to draw them to a satisfactory conclusion – or at least some sort of provisional ending (though even that doesn’t always work).