I Write, Therefore I Am

Well, tomorrow I begin anew at my old job, where I spent the better part of six years making television and film more watchable and enjoyable for those with hearing disabilities. I'm quite looking forward to it. It'll be the best thing to ever happen to my writing.

I've felt rather literarily blocked for some time now. Fancy way of saying I've suffered writer's block, which some people think is a fiction. Shrug. It's real enough. It's overcomeable, but it's real. I'm almost over mine. I've been thinking a lot about writing today 'cos I saw that I had a comment posted late last night on one of my favourite old posts. Inspired by wine and nothing better to do, I began to read the old post. Suddenly I was struck by how articulate I sounded back then.

I haven't felt articulate for some time now. It's like the perfect fall day when it happens -- everything gets crisp, clear, fresh, vibrant. It's fantastic. When I'm not articulate, it feels kind of like how you would imagine that once-brilliant stroke victim as you stare at them, knowing that they're absolutely aware of what they want to say, but are tortured by the inability to know how to say it.

Granted, writer's block is not even in the same postal code of that horrific affliction, but every now and then I feel like I understand how painful that must be and I'm overcome by empathy for it.

It's interesting, my old job, in what it does for writing, for me. Imagine, if you will, the task of sitting there hour after hour working painfully slowly on a single television show, about six hours for an hour-long show, and just how much one would need to focus on language and the order of words in that time. It's just remarkable how much I will have to focus on the ways in which things are said.

I always want to come home and write for a while after I've had to sit there methodically programming in the words spoken by others. It's a sense of reclaiming the self. I come home and I use all my words, in whatsoever order I choose, at a length I desire. Every day I get to reclaim myself when I go home... something I've been unable to do for months.

Then, to have this little spate of FUBARedness in the last few days whereby I was robbed of my ability to post and blog at will, and I'm left with this very happy little bit of me who thinks this uncanny combination of a few little ingredients might be making what could be the best time to be a writer I've ever had. I love writing in the fall and winter. I'm about to make my laptop wireless so I can write anywhere at any time. I'm on the verge of self-controlled work hours and a little financial relief. Things are good. It's a very, very good time to be Steff.

PS: My morning so far? I got up at eight and I've been watching a marathon of the last five episodes of Heroes. I'm about to watch the final hour of season one. I'm a happy camper that season two begins tomorrow. I love a story about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Fun! Ahead looms a bike ride. The last decent Sunday before the rainy season begins, if the weather prognosticators are right this week. Sigh. Have a good one, minions. :)