Day 15

Originally posted in 2020 as part of the series The View From Here: Life in Lockdown

Do you ever have an idea in your head, whether it’s a poem, or a novel, or a new art piece, or even something that would just make life a little easier like that guy (or gal, I don’t actually know) who invented toaster tongs? And then you start throwing up road blocks — it would never work, I don’t have time today, it’s just a stupid idea, and so on and so forth — until you wake up one morning and realize that idea has been rattling around in your head for years? Yeah, me neither. I’m great with complicated ideas that require a lot of work and thought and have no hard deadlines…and other things that rhyme with irony. 

I’m a writer. I’ve always been a writer. At least, in my head I have always been a writer. I wrote stories a lot when I was a kid. I always had a new idea, a new character. Even now, I’m usually working out sentences in my head, trying to figure out how best to describe whatever I happen to be looking at. 

I wrote a children’s book when I first graduated from college. I shopped it around to agents, but there were no takers, so I shelved it. I got a job writing articles for a magazine for a while, and it felt great to be published. I felt like a real writer. I started writing a novel—something really incredible. I couldn’t believe it came out of my own brain. And then it sat there. Unfinished. I’m not sure why. 

And now it’s rattling around in my head again. I hear it in there, wanting me to finish it. Let it out. What if no one cares? What if I shop it around, and no one wants it? What if it sits on my shelf like the last one? I don’t really have answers to those questions. 

At least the toaster tongs guy had his shit together.