By Alex: 011

Writers write. So write.

I have a mid-year resolution – I will be writing.

Yes, yes, I know what you are thinking: you already write, that is literally your job, you are a writer and thus, you write. And you would be correct, that is my job, I am a writer, I write every single day.

But I don’t write.

Being paid to come up with pithy one-liners for social media, attention-grabbing headlines for internal announcements, and imaginative story-telling copy for corporate publications is still a relatively new situation for me; and I am extremely, eternally, grateful for such a cushy deal in life. However, when I tell people that I am a writer, this is not what I am referring to.

When I say I am a writer, my mind swirls with images of myself sitting hunched over my laptop, surrounded by piles of research, working to the early hours to meet my deadline. Having a project that I am passionate about, that consumes me, and which I just have to put onto paper.

That is a writer, I am an imposter.

I have never been the kind of writer to just sit down and start writing, not for the sake of writing itself. Sure, at work that is definitely my approach – I do sit down and just start writing, believing firmly that no good ideas will ever come from a blank page. Yet when it comes to my personal writing, I just can’t apply the same philosophy. I seem to constantly get stuck, and am constantly facing a blank page that I cannot fill.

Is that a writer? Am I a creative person?

The more stuck I feel, the more these questions trouble me, and the more stuck I feel.

Sometimes I realise that the Fun House theme song has been going around and around in my head for days. I wake up in the morning and there it is - a low-level background mockery of my own creation. I can’t help but feel that it’s a terrible, sarcastic way of my subconscious telling me that this is all make-believe: that I am not a writer and I will not be having a whole lot of fun anytime soon.

Maybe I am thinking about it too deeply.

Perhaps I should stop analysing my work, and just actually do it.