I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, but writing feels like a miserable chore lately. Even these blog posts take way too long to write, and I never like the finished product. I say this not to solicit pity, but simply to state a fact: I am not having fun anymore.

All this self doubt has me thinking about why I started writing in the first place–and why (or how) I should continue.

Unlike some writers I know, who, at the age of nine, knew they would be a writer, I didn’t decide to write; I was given permission.

I read a lot as a child–mostly comics, Choose Your Own Adventure, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators (which is really just the Hardy Boys + 1)–before graduating on to more, ahem, adult stuff: Critchon, King, etc. And eventually the Pennsylvania public school system did its part by introducing me to Shakespeare (the Mel Gibson version), William Golding (the 1963 version), and F. Scott Fitzgerald (the Redford version). But never, in all those years of reading, did I think to myself, “Hey, I can (or should) do this.” I drew penises in the margins of my notebook and called it a day.
Read more »