Why I don't write -- Kimberley Payne

Sometimes I fight writing. I know I have a great idea and I’ve even started it inside my mind, but I put the brakes on. I don’t want to transfer it to paper because I’m afraid that if I start and then am interrupted by the telephone, or by a child’s cry, or by the dryer’s buzzer I fear that I may lose it altogether.

Instead of starting, I keep it inside to protect and nurture it until the timing is right to let it loose. But have I lost ideas entirely because of this? I don’t know. I can’t remember. Perhaps blissfully I lose ideas but is this better than knowingly losing ideas?

I’ve never chanced starting to write knowing that I had only 30 minutes to get my idea down. I’ve never risked it. I’m too afraid that if I let the idea loose without completing it, well then, I’d lose it forever.

I don’t know if I could pick up where I had left off. I don’t know if I could get myself back into that frame of mind.

I feel like I move in spurts. There is a period of incubation and formulation. The thought is tossed and turned and moulded in my mind. Then the moment comes where the idea bursts forward and splatters in ink on my paper. I cannot stop it and it runs like a locomotive fiercely out of my mind onto the page.

But as the ink dries, the idea dies out. The writer is spent. And once spent, I return to incubation.

Do I unleash the train before it’s ready? Do I dare ever proceed or yank the brake cord just as the train gathers speed?

This is my dilemma as a writer. Do I take my opportunities as they come up, or wait for the ideal moment? Do I write regardless or steal those moments to luxuriate in reading?

As I pose these questions to myself, I already know the answer. A writer writes.

No more excuses. No hiding behind reading. A writer writes when the ideas are there. And when the ideas are not there. A writer writes through the incubation and into the inspiration. A writer writes.