Words Repeated

I often wonder if I have anything original to say. Anything new to add to the world. (Even this is not an original thought!) I spend too much time trying to be interesting, captivating, clever, heartwarming, memorable, that by the time I’ve written 45 words, it’s what someone else has already said. Nothing is new under the sun and my words are just another repeated bundle.

But you know, my name has been said a million times in a thousand different ways. Joy, love, disappointment, uncertainty, pride, admiration, sorrow, apology, care, hesitance.

Each time feels new. It never gets old.

Perhaps this is the attitude I should have towards my own words. That no matter how many times I write about childhood, or love, or the moon turning the tide silver, it will never be too many times. It does not matter how many other people have written about the same things, if a story needs to be told, then it should be.

For so long – and I think I’ve mentioned this before – I thought something big had to happen to me in order to have something to say. As though only the dramatic has a voice. As though the simple, the ordinary, the everyday, is not important. But that’s life, that’s most of this life, isn’t it? The everyday, going through the motions and trying to find beauty in them.

I’m not saying I want to write a boring story.

But I am saying that there are words here and they should be written. There’s something growing, something about writing, in me. I’m trying to remember who I was when I first started to write, I want to remember what pushed me to keep going. I wonder why I can only look back and picture it being a quick and easy process when I know that isn’t true.

I’m constantly trying to balance write when you don’t feel inspired with but it doesn’t sound good if I’m uninspired. I’m constantly telling myself that the first draft isn’t the masterpiece, the hundredth edit is. I just have to get there.

But it feels far away, maybe too far, for someone who wants to write something original, unlike anything anyone has written before.

Later today, I will sit with a notebook and a pen and I will throw words onto the page until something sticks. I will give myself time. I will give myself compassion. And I will give myself the freedom to write something ugly, because that’s just how creativity goes sometimes.

Let’s see what happens.

Sarah xx