the writing cure

When I was in high school, I'd write when I needed to. For reasons unknown to me, and commented upon by teachers for reasons also unknown to me, my sentences and paragraphs all came together relatively free of semantic and syntactical errors. I didn't pursue creative writing, letter writing, diary keeping, or any other great skill-honing crafts. I actually never started writing for fun until I was out of my undergraduate program (which was also the time that I started reading things I figured I had missed in college and before: Faulkner, Nabokov, Dostoevsky, Hurston, and similar fare). It was a year or so out of school, after traveling and moving around, that I started writing letters to people--in a way that was usually more fulfilling for me, and always just a riot.

Then, I entered an MA program. I was still surprised to hear that my writing was "good," "cogent," "fluid," "readable" and such. But, writing was not a problem--even as it became a chore, which means it became an object of procrastination, which means that a tiny little wedge of despair had been gently inserted into the process.

Then (brief biographical aside), I moved to a huge city, taught some community college, moved to a smaller city and taught some more CC, and finally entered a PhD program where I was longing to write and to express myself. Well, I felt so alive during coursework, and I finally was more thrilled than confused to hear that my writing exhibited some talent. Enter, of course, preliminary exams, prospectus, and diss. Somehow, in a matter of only about 2 years, all of the joy of writing and thinking and reading and living-the-critical-life was sucked out of me. What I have not been able to understand, though , is that, as the fun and spark was replaced by doubt and despair, I was still given the highest accolades and embarrassingly positive feedback from committee members who are important-names-in-the-field.

Since then, all writing has been a struggle. I get the creepy crawlies in my flesh and on my skin as I search in vain for the right clever phrases and bone-jarring insights. They never come, of course. Yet, I send out the occasional essay that has received more excruciating attention than a journal article ever should. And I get back the mixed reviews and the rejections that can't quite explain what's wrong, and the resubmissions that are returned as the editorships change hands. And the doubt and despair becomes the sickness that consumes me.

And just when I feel that the case is terminal, that writing will never be fun, that I am doomed to this malaise and this unhealthy relationship to what once was a fun craft, I decide that I should take a crack at this blogging business. I mean, if millions and millions of people can sign up every day and just do it, then certainly I can too. And maybe, hopefully, writing can be fun again, and the insights may start to flow again, and I can find the me that I lost along the way. And like a sulfur spring, maybe soaking in the blogosphere, and writing for me more than others, will be my cure.