Whenever I come back to writing after a long break, I feel as though I just sent the first text to a friend to whom I haven’t spoken in a while. I feel that reaching out with awkward timidity. How are things going? I’m still here. I still care about you.
And it can be awkward to get back to writing and develop your voice again. We work so hard to find that voice in the first place.
But we all tend to get busy and stop writing for ourselves at some point. Life gets in the way, and we cease to come to the little blank space we enjoy on a computer or in a journal. This space where we pour out our innermost musings sits empty for a while. We are the friend who drifts out of touch.
Most of the time, when I stop writing, it’s because life has gotten too hectic, too demanding or too heavy, and you might be in the same boat. You might be dealing with grief or anxieties or life circumstances that threaten to shatter you. I often get frustrated with myself at this point because I can’t seem to put my words on paper in a meaningful way. I get angry that something I know I love to do is still this hard. I stop writing for a while not exactly because I don’t want to, but because I simply can’t make myself. Even if you are used to processing life through writing, blogging or journaling, there are times when it just won’t happen.
In the past, I confided in a friend about the loss of my writing voice, and she shared these words with me:
“I think there are times to write about what has happened to us, and then I think there are times to allow what’s happening to us to just happen. No writing it down. No trying to make it eloquent. No forcibly documenting it for the world to comment on.”
These words of a favorite writer of mine, Hannah Brencher, completely encapsulated this time in my life. I was tired of trying to make everything eloquent, to make it beautiful when it wasn’t. There are times when you need to pause, even from art, and learn how to take care of yourself. There are times when you need to learn how to take care of others who need you. There are times when you need to sit with the bad however uncomfortable it may be.
I feel as though too often I try to make good come out of the bad, even though I don’t believe it has to be this way. Sometimes there isn’t a reason for everything, and sometimes it’s okay to feel hurt without immediately jumping up and recounting the lessons you learned from the experience. Sometimes, you just have to put your head down and keep trucking until it’s better. Sometimes, you can’t write through it because you just have to live it.
But just know that you will get your writing voice back. It might be a little hoarse, but eventually it will pick up again. Like riding a bike, you won’t forget how to write, even if it needs a little refining to work out the kinks at first. Sooner or later, writing will continue to be what you need it to be—work, therapy, connection, art. Even the greatest artists have gone on hiatus a time or two. Know that it’s okay for you to do the same.
