I want to write

I want to write, and this kept turning into a story so I had to move it onto "Without Ethnicity" the nonfiction blog...uh I mean the fiction blog...this is the one for nonfiction...

So today`s topic: action, agency, activity and the letter A.

I don't have many books, but for some reason, that I haven't quite sorted out yet, the Book of Mormon is among the books I do have. So, for lack of something more stimulating, I was reading a little theology today and thinking about action and agency. I am thinking about what motivates us to move or act or do or try things in our lives. And after a lot of thinking about the question of why...why does fear motivate us, why does love motivate us, why does public opinion motivate us, why does a gym membership not motivate us, why should i keep reading this book, why should i write a new story, why shouldn't i cry it is tuesday...I was never much good at Tuesdays ... these kinds of whys, I think that why doesn't really matter.

I think it is time to stop needing reasons to act.

In a way this compulsive justification is stiffling our freedom to act as free and autonomous beings. I used to write because i was justified in writing. I had to write an assignment, I had to find out what a game was called, I had to tell someone a good recipe for a ham sandwich, I had to had to had to. i had so many reasons why i should, could, would, and did write. And then, I think, one day those reasons disappeared. And this became the first step in my great block.

I didn't think I had a reason to write. I didn't think I had something to say, didn't think I wanted to. I graduated, so I didn't have professors to read my writing. I have told the world about ham sandwiches. I got rejected by a couple journals (rejection sucks) and was just left with you (friends and strangers) -- and you are very busy people I shouldn't write you things to read unless they are very funny or important or or or-- and I didn't think you really wanted to read my writing. and even less want to talk about words written in a fictional space. So the block grew bigger.

And it grew and grew and I started to feed it, and I had really great justifications for why i didn't, couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't write. And i started scratching out big crosses and black marks in my writing, every time i wrote anything it became a big hole of frustrated justification.

And then, I don't know why, but it stopped mattering. All the editing and self aborting ideas stopped being aborted, and now i am running out of notebooks. But its all poetry now, so I think Splot is going to get pretty quite now. Don't worry I haven't gone far.