The Loss Of Faith
Why am I actually doing this?
There are two draft posts sitting on this platform, one of which I started weeks ago, and one of which I started last week. I don’t see that I’ll ever turn them from drafts into finished articles.
The truth is that, right now, I’ve lost faith in my writing, and faith in the process. I am halfway through editing The Mortality Code, and I’m sick of it. I’m tired of how much of my time drains away when I am writing or editing, or thinking about writing and editing. I know life isn’t meant to be fun all the time, but this isn’t fun even for a fraction of the time.
I have read some really good books lately, novels which have transported me onto a different plane either through their language, or the subject matter, or their sheer differentness. And they’ve made me ask myself why I’m even sitting here, masquerading as a writer when my words aren’t printed on book paper with book ink, and not read by thousands of people who want to be taken somewhere else when they’re reading. I don’t feel bitter about that, though; it is the nature of creativity that most creative voices go unheard, and it is a competiive jungle out there in bookland. What I am bitter about is this - I realised this morning that, actually, I’ve neglected real life for this writing in a small room, in front of a small screen, notes and thesaurus to one side of the keyboard, phone and mouse to the other (I use my left hand for my mouse, just for a full picture), work day book between keyboard and screen (ah, the combination and conflation of my lives), anglepoise lamp shining a pool of yellow light onto the whole set-up. What is the point?
A part of me just wants to fold closed all these journals, all the notebooks, delete all these folders and drafts, extinguish every social media presence I have, and go back to the life I now see as carefree, the life I had before I started to see myself as someone who had the skill and determination to be a writer all of the time. To go back to, or to phrase it better - to regain freedom, to find happiness, to stop looking inside of myself and just to enjoy the world for what it is, however much of a mess it might be in right now.