oh dear.

I am having terrible, terrible writer's block. It's not like it's the first time but tonight I set out to do my writing assignment and....nothing. I literally cannot put so much as a letter down on the word document. I honestly feel like my head is empty -- a dark, empty vessel with a face painted on it! It's like i keep reaching my hand in to pull something out but there ain't nothing to choose from. what the hell. and yet here i am. i can babble on endlessly (husband will attest) but when it comes to "WRITING," i freeze.

M. just called. "don't try to be artistic."

He's right.

i never used to have this problem. I could just sit down at my computer and literally, GO. it was easy for me. Oh how i took that for granted. What i wouldn't give to write poetry in my head again and rush to pen and paper or laptop to get it down and let it take its course. there was always revision, draft after draft but there was something to work with - an idea, an emotion, a scene, a story that had to get out. And now, nothing....

Part of the problem is obvious to me. Months ago, maybe even a year at this point, i set out to compile and articulate the stories of my childhood with my maternal grandparents and how their lives and mine, intersected and how that shaped me. Well, i'm all out of material. I mean, not really - not entirely, of course not! But part of me does feel like i've dug all that up and written it all up in some shape or form and it's just...underwhelming. It's not a memoir, it's not a full story, it's not what i want it to be. So now what?

Well, now i rewrite, i retell, i search, and search my memory until a chord is struck, until the groping hand takes hold of something. So, there's that. Then there is the research element which i've written about before. I sounded motivated, didn't i? But for serious - i really have no idea what to do. Even writing about how absolutely clueless i am about how to go about this sends my head spinning in circles. So i'm just not gonna.

Another thing and really, the heart of the problem is this: I'm terrified. I am so afraid of not writing well that i have trained myself to not write at all. As if this isn't a big enough problem, in (somewhat unconsciously) choosing to write exclusively on this topic, on something so heavy, so significant and so absolutely worthy of only the finest words, i have paralyzed myself. I so badly want to honor my grandparents' lives that i'm scared my words will not be worthy of their story (right now, Rivka is teary eyed and shaking her head "no").

So anyways. Maybe i will post this as my homework assignment. It's something. It's words, on a page, in a particular order. And these days, i am grateful, though completely unsatisfied with that.