inspiration stricken

writing is my one true love, but i'm a neglectful partner. i have always had these dreams of publication—dreams that will undoubtedly fail to live up to the fairytale-esque hype my childhood self foisted on them, much like turning sixteen, my entire college experience, and becoming a teacher. despite the unlikelihood, i can't altogether nix the idea that getting published will fix all my problems and deliver the fulfillment i've always yearned for, yet sitting down and putting words on the page, the only thing that will tangibly bring me closer to the possibility of that dream becoming reality, is something i put off habitually. 

if you ask me who i am, regardless of what leaves my mouth, the true answer is a writer. but if you observe what i do, there's a clear mismatch. 

i'm not sure if i first saw it online or heard it in a workshop, but for several years, i've been living by the edict that if you wait for inspiration to strike before you write, you'll never finish anything. relying on something as elusive as inspiration might work fine for dabblers and hobbyists, but people like me, who have high standards and reverence for the craft (see also: people who are extremely pretentious), would never get anything done if we only wrote when it felt "good." 

i wanted to put a metaphor somewhere in here about what it feels like to be caught between wanting nothing more than to write while also feeling tortured while doing it, but it started to fall apart. i think the best way to describe it is with the old cliche "can't live with it, can't live without it." something in me shrivels up when i go through long phases sans writing, but these long phases wouldn't exist if i developed a consistent routine and shoved inspiration off of its lofty pedestal. 

sometimes, i reread my old work in search of tangible proof that i'm not a talentless hack who's incapable of finishing anything. this has varying results; while i'm often pleasantly surprised with what my adolescent brain came up with, i still can't get myself to read one of the stories i turned in for my first fiction workshop when i was a freshman in college for fear i may cringe to death. my more recent pieces have the consistency of someone who's learned the value of editing and brevity, and this sometimes makes for a surprising experience where i'm not convinced that what i'm reading is actually my own writing. 

even though each story ostensibly came from my brain, time allows me to take distance from the process, making it harder to claim ownership of the piece. it doesn't help that i have a habit of compartmentalizing my identity—the me of my final fiction workshop in my junior year is almost entirely distinct from the me of that first one—so it genuinely feels like somebody else wrote what has my name on it. i wonder if this is something all writers go through, regardless of how prolific they are, or if i am uniquely fucked up. but the odds of that are so small that i try to remind myself to show me some grace. 

i don't like to apply my own advice to myself, or maybe it's more apt to say that i don't know how. after all, i've been writing since long before i could do it well or even cared to, so a lot of my beliefs and habits are trapped layers deep within me, painted over like a landlord special after a large number of tenants.

devastatingly, none of my earliest works, exuberant stories that i set out to write with no outline and lovingly illustrated in marker and crayon, have survived the many years that have passed and two moves to new houses (though i still hold out hope of unearthing them from a forgotten locale one day). still, i can recall the deep focus that would overtake me when i worked on them. time would slip away entirely, my surroundings would dim, and i'd have a rush of adrenaline from trying to capture the words that risked slipping into the chasm between how quickly sentences came to me and the speed my hands could write them down. 

maybe if i went to a writer's retreat, enrolled in an mfa program, tried psychedelics, or uninstalled tiktok, i'd be fixed and revert back to that blissful, trance-like state of constant productivity. but in all likelihood, anything i implemented would work well at first then face diminished returns.