The Imagination Hiatus and the Quirky Creative Process

Recently, I find myself mourning a loss. Please do not fear. No one has passed away, I have not misplaced a family heirloom nor have I experienced any other such cause for misery per se but I do find myself missing the days where I would sit around with my imagination as my company and just write. For those who have either not known me long or have not known me with any deep degree of friendly intimacy, I have long wanted to be a great novelist. Ok...maybe not great in the canonical sense but at least noteworthy in the Young Adult genre... I have several works that I have begun but I never seem to either find the time to finish them or I abandon them for being "not quite good enough".

Confession: I have not put pen to paper as an aspiring novelist in nearly two years.

That is a long time!

It is strange to imagine that I have allowed myself such a hiatus from an activity that I find so amazingly therapeutic. This is not to say that I have been completely denying myself any creative outlets. I am a crafter and in some ways my crafting allows me to express myself but there are so many more ways that the written word serves me. I am able to work out internal issues and frustrations through writing  and I am certain that, for many of these issues, my crafting, in comparison, will never serve as an adequate outlet.

Confession: I can barely remember a time when I did not love to write.

In fact, I am a bit quirky when it comes to creative writing. I tend, in my deepest imaginative thoughts, to whisper through the scenario or possible dialogues for my works (most people would construe this as one talking to oneself...). When I was in grade school, probably around second grade, I learned that this was apparently a strange thing to do in public. I sat behind a boy, I believe his name was Brad, and the class was having a "free write" time. I, deep in thought, was whispering to myself and Brad turned around to face me. His eyes were wide with horror. I remember those eyes well. There is no doubt in my mind that he thought I was a psychopath. A day or two later, the classroom was rearranged. I always wondered in the back of my mind if Brad requested not to sit by the "weirdo" anymore or if the teacher had been planning the move anyway. In any case, I never sat less than two to three desks away from Brad for the rest of the year.

Fast forward to high school: I never really gave up on this quirk. I tried really hard not to do this talk-to-myself-whisper thing in public anymore but when I was around people with whom I was really comfortable, I would often do it without realizing it. My family usually just ignored it. I mean for them, it is/was something that they were used to. Cue the High School Sweetheart. I would slip sometimes and do this in front of him and he would inquire about my strange whisperings. I would either:

A.) Deny I was doing it

B.) Say it was nothing

Either of these answers would, of course, start a fight (we had a very nurturing, healthy, and trust-filled relationship...). But let's expose the true problem: I was uncomfortable confronting the idea that I was engaging in quirky act which, ever since second grade, I believed to be absolutely non-normative behavior. Basically, little Brad's reaction and the subsequent (albeit probably coincidental) class room rearrangement scarred me.

Well...now that my blog post about missing writing has become a blog post about missing writing and my bizarre creative process...I should probably stop typing before you, just like little Brad, believe that I am a total weirdo.