I've been talking to (read: torturing mercilessly) a dear friend and classmate about this malaise de l'écriture* and apparently this feeling of depression is fairly normal for writers. Everything we do and think and feel and work out happens inside our heads. We can't show it to someone else as we see it because we're the only ones with the binoculars, and until we write it down there's not another single soul out there who will understand. Heck, even after it's written down it isn't the exact image we saw. Maybe that shade of blue doesn't have a word to describe it. Maybe that character isn't as nice as he looked in your head. Maybe, what you thought you saw never made it to the page. Maybe, now you're afraid to write it. Maybe.
It's been five months since graduation and I haven't written a single creative word. I have been afraid to write again. There's a story in my heart, the story I want to hear, the story that needs to be told, but I've yet to be able to articulate it as it appears in my every thought and breath. And now there are people out there, real and important people, who have the only remaining written snippet of this story and in a few short weeks they're going to want to speak to me about it. I have so much to say about my characters and their story, but I don't know how to say it.
I told my classmate that I thought my life would be different on this side of my MFA. I thought that I would be different. Maybe I am different. Maybe I do possess the skills to do this on my own. The daunting side of having an MFA is that there is no adviser to ask you for your packet work. There is no monthly deadline or threat of not passing looming over your head. My fears have shifted from not passing the semester to not making enough money between two jobs to afford my bills (including the student loans FOR the MFA) and the numerous weddings and life events that crept up on me while I was in my school bubble. I want to move out and I'm afraid that I never will. I'm terrified every time I post on here that I'll make some huge grammatical mistake and look like a waste of an education. Those are normal fears, though. I've let these fears push my need to write so far back that writing isn't even on the back burner anymore, it ended up in the pantry. Out of sight, out of mind.
I doubted that I was a real writer for the past two years of my life, but I can tell you right now that that isn't true. My hands itch to create. I spend all of my time living in my head, in the world I'm trying to bring to life. Sure, I still cringe when I think of some of the things I wrote when I was still in school, things that I'm not proud of but will live on as my legacy. And I don't know what the future holds. I don't know what I'm going to say to these important and intelligent people in a few weeks, if and when they ask me about my writing. But I know I'm not alone in these fears. And I know that I'm a writer, and these people are my people, in good times and in terrifying times.
* dear God I hope I have no French speaking readers. Google translate, don't let me down.