Post Snippet; The Flower in Your Embrace

(Another post snippet. I do this from time to time, just take my posts from elsewhere and save them here. The height of ego, eh?)

Oh the guilt! "Everything in my life is great, why can't I even do this one thing?"  I know that feeling well...and it doesn't get better as you age, until you realise a few things.

Writing under pressure is hard. It's like trying to contort and squeeze in on something that's as precious as a flower, trying not to crush it to pieces, but to somehow make it bloom by will alone. And then it's as if you're pushing in both directions, pressing down on yourself while gasping for air and pushing back to leave that little breathing room. You're wrung out and crying, taut and beaten ragged, and that's even before you try to write.

Sometimes your story reaches out to you, like a golden sun extending its warm rays to you. In those cases, if you're pushed to put your hand out, it'll simply settle in your palm, flowing over you and filling you with that beautiful feeling. Sometimes it's inside a glass case, and you need to smash through to grasp that trophy, but when you do, you're filled with elation. Sometimes it's behind rock, and you need to come equipped with mining gear, and if you're lucky, some well placed dynamite might get you through to those gems.

But...all of these cases are different, and all of them live inside of you. If you're crushing that flower that is your soul, it's not because you're not a writer or that you can't write that it's not coming out, it's because you're not in the right place for it to flower. Nothing works if you're screaming at yourself, telling yourself that the conditions are all right, why isn't it working. The most beautiful flowers don't always bloom in paradise, some bloom in the desert, some bloom in the winter, some surprise you in the middle of desolation and pain.

As any kind of artist, it behooves thee to know thyself. To not crush that tenuous link between your muse and yourself by ripping yourself to shreds when it's just not working. Sit back, breathe, relax. The proof of your writing isn't in whether you can crush out a novel in thirty days, or thirty years, that's just the validation from the rest of the world. The proof is that your soul speaks in the written word. All those little snippets, pieces of prose, long forgotten words of wisdom, snatches of shining story...are not worthless. They may not be something you can earn money from, but that means nothing. Artists don't 'art' for money, we do it to send a message, to communicate, to touch people. That alone has value in a world such as this.

The fact that you want to reflect on your life doesn't mean that you're not a writer. It means the opposite. It means writing is so crucial to your soul that you can't see another way to live. Welcome to the club. Now stop punishing yourself and realise that if you turned your gaze to anything other than your story right now, words would flow out of you. Passion would flow out of you. Life would flow right out of you.

So do something else. Live, and let the story wait for another day.