How many words do I write........

"To find out what I hold most precious,
I will try giving it up."

I gave up on writing about ten years back. Settled into what I had created as my reality of "I have nothing worthy to say." I went years without writing a word. I wasn't willing to give up people, places and things I held more precious than writing. I made different choices than other writers. That is all I did. Make different choices. Today, and just for today, writing is too precious for me to give up for any person, place or thing.

It isn't until I sit down at my desk in front of my laptop, staring out the window at the world going on without me, that I feel like I am giving up something to write. As a writer I spend more hours alone than anyone I know. I can't sit still and write unless I am comfortable enough with myself to enjoy my own company. Believe me there are days when I do not enjoy my own company and I can’t sit still.

What I do as a writer on those days when I am uncomfortable is sit at my desk imagining a world that is my utopia. There is nothing in this utopia that causes me pain unless I write the pain. There is no heartache, no loneliness, no fear and there are no tears, or rejection or abandonment. The best way to describe my utopia is as a void. My utopia doesn't ever really exist because I haven't written it.

What does exist are my circumstances, the daily grind of being me, the me I am not contented with. If I am not content in my being then I cannot sit down being content to write me. Writing is always about me and how I feel about me in the moment. Some days when I cannot write it is because I have let someone’s discontentment with me become me.

I cannot write on yesterday’s motivation or inspiration. Yesterday no longer exists. I cannot write on tomorrow's desires or wishes. Tomorrow hasn't come yet. What I can write is the moment I am in and only that moment.

I must always sit down at the laptop with a feeling. As a writer I must first write the feeling then a character may come along and with the character may come a setting and then comes a few more characters and before I know it I am waste deep in a plot and I can't stop what I am feeling to stop what I am writing.

Writing is for people who are comfortable being alone. This writer must be comfortable being alone reassessing, rethinking, reanalyzing, over assessing, over thinking and over analyzing not just the world I live in, but the world I am creating.

How do I start? How do I get the dream of a utopia out of my head? How do I focus one single thought so I can write my world from the inside out? I stop thinking about it and I just do it. That’s how I do it; I simply just do it. There really is nothing complex or mysterious about starting to write. You just type a word, then another word, then another and another and another and another word and another……..

Everything in life worth having and everything worth losing is never the object of my desire until I imagine giving it up. It is the same with writing. I take my ability, my gift for granted until I willingly imagine giving it up. It isn’t until I willingly let something, someone, some hurt twist my mind and heart that I give up writing. In that moment I have gone numb and cannot feel; I become that overwhelmed with hurt that I stop feeling. I can sit at the desk all day and daydream about how terrible it is that I cannot write. I can just simply give up before I start and some days I do.

I don't believe in writer's block, but there are days I cannot write. Those are the days I choose not to feel. Once I choose not to feel then I have created a block, but it is not a writer's block it is a feeling block; those years when I chose not to write I also chose not to feel.

I can choose to sit or I can choose to write something. I can choose to look out the window at the world going on without me or I can choose to write the world going on within me. The choice is always mine.

I have sat at my desk endless hours over the course of my writing life and not typed a single word. The criteria for my success as a writer is not how many people read my words, but how many words I write to read………..