What Keeps You From Writing?

For years now I’ve been tell myself, and anyone who would listen, that I couldn’t write because I didn’t have enough time. Well, I’ve been unemployed now for four months however nothing has changed. There’s plenty of time to write yet my butt-in-the-chair time has not increased. I went to breakfast recently with an aspiring writer friend of mine, who is still working, and told her that. I watched her face fall.

Perhaps for her it will be different, but I highly doubt it. The real reason I haven’t written more than I have in these 120 days is that I still have to shift my thinking from the mundane to enter the imaginary. That has always been difficult for me and probably more so than for others because I literally have a split personality when it comes to left brain versus right brain. I’ve functioned well in business due to organizational and marketing skills, which isn’t exactly the traditional artist’s way.

When my late husband was still with me, he’d steer me into my writing office, which he helped me create, the minute I walked through the door at the end of the work day, urging me to type a page or two before I started on the evening chores. That was an incredible gift. During a period of about two years, I wrote nine screenplays.

Now that it’s just me in my little RV, I must find that loving voice within and guide my writing spirit into a creative space on a more regular basis and before I jump into the day’s chores. I’m working on it. That’s what I did this morning. Writing this post came before anything else.

So, if you’re having trouble escaping into the world in which you write, I urge you to delve into why this is happening and then try to develop a trigger mechanism, something that will propel you to your writing space as urgently as life seems to want to pull you away. 

It’s a battle we can win.