Why Is Something I Love So Hard?

I love to write, so why is it that I can't seem to bring myself to do it? Why do I sit here in front of this big, vast, white space and feel unable to fill it with something? Anything. Even now, something as nonthreatening as a little blog post, that doesn't really mean anything to anyone except maybe myself, I can't seem to get past the whiteness of it. I feel like my feet are caught in the mud and I'm tugging and pulling but I can't seem to get them out, and for some reason my shoes have become vacuum-sealed to my feet because taking them off isn't an option either. Or maybe it's more like I have to poop but nothing is coming out.

Yep. I've even used that metaphor before (believe it or not).

I feel like Matt De La Pena (an author who spoke at the SCBWI conference) did when he was describing this scene from his past during his keynote, which ended up in one of his books. As a teenager, he was at the beach with his uncle when his uncle decided that they were going to swim to the buoy and back. All macho like. To impress a couple of girls. They swam and swam and realized they getting tired only halfway there and thought that they weren't going to make it, and so they began to panic. So there they were, out in the middle of the water, halfway between the shore and buoy, panicking and thinking that they were both going to drown. Finally, after struggling and thinking "well, this is it" the lifeguard yelled at them from across the beach "STOP. STAND UP." Lo and behold they were only about 5 feet deep the whole time. Oops.

I think Matt's story (told much more hilariously and eloquently at the conference) pretty much sums up how I feel about my writing. Like I'm struggling and flailing for no reason and if I would just relax and let go, I'd realize that I was standing all along, that I could do this the whole time.

For now though, I'll probably keep drowning in my own little 5 feet of water, until eventually, one way or another, my feet touch the bottom.