I don’t know what to write. In the last hour, I’ve started over 50 sentences but have deleted them all. Hello there writer’s block – we meet again.

In desperate need for inspiration, I open my Kindle highlights and scan for any writing prompts. But everything is either uninteresting to me right now or would take too long to write on.

As I’m on the verge of giving up, one highlight from a book I read years ago shines out to me. It’s from Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within – an appropriate title for my situation, I guess. The quote goes like this:

When you write, don’t say, “I’m going to write a poem.” That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, “I am free to write the worst junk in the world.” You have to give yourself the space to write a lot without a destination.

Reading this was oddly comforting. When you start doing something a lot, there’s this expectation that the quality of your work must increase with time – that each iteration must be better than the one before. But life is rarely so linear. There are ups and downs, highs and lows; times you feel inspired and times where you just want to nap. Right now, I just want to nap.

So here I am, back to writing unedited junk. And it’s great fun. Let’s hope the next post will be better.