I Haven’t Written in Months. Am I Still A Writer?

When I started writing poetry and short stories in elementary and high school, writing was simple because I had all my untapped experiences as inspiration. Most days readily wrote themselves into poetry. I was a writer, and I never had to worry if I still lived up to the name. 

In university, studying for my BA in Creative Writing, my desire to write was dulled by the disproportionate number of other classes I had to take compared to creative writing ones. Spending most days studying Latin or psychology statistics for my minors, my passions for initially taking the courses–to read Latin literature in the original Latin, and to simply enjoy psychology, because I do–were snuffed out by my preoccupation for high marks. I got them, graduating with great distinction and a medal. Did it change anything? Not really. I still enjoy reading Latin, and I occasionally try to write my own poetry in it, though I often fail.

I read far more than I write, and I scarcely read. Not for lack of trying, as it feels that everything has already been written. After a decade of writing, everything that I have to say has already been done, by me. I’ve written in countless forms and metres on every topic that ever mattered to me. Every few months, I will still enter an impassioned phase where I’ll write several amazing poems in a day. Other times I will write something superbly mediocre and leave it in my unfinished folder, where it will stay for years with old drafts from high school. Most days, I do not write. 

As I look forward to my upcoming master’s degree, I am reminding myself that exciting events may occur to and around you, but you have to translate them into usable inspiration. Structure keeps me on track writing, but it is a tool that I have to implement myself outside of school. For instance, recently joining iPlume, I have already been able to write more in a week than in a month of summer on my own time. 

If, like me, you often struggle to find a reason to write despite calling yourself a writer, here are two tips that I find effective.

Freewriting

Write continuously – whatever comes to your mind. Then, edit, edit, edit. That’s what I did for this post. Did it work? If I stop to overthink about what I want to write or in which direction it is going, I halt my own creativity and will end up unable to begin or continue a piece.

Implementing writing constraints

Something I learned begrudgingly from a creative writing professor that ended up being extremely pertinent to my poetry is that constraining your writing can expand your creativity. My most recent and best-written poems are those that use constraints. I’ve created poems where each word is a specific number of letters, each line has every letter of the alphabet, each line follows a repeating vowel pattern, and so on. I’ve been drawn to Oulipo, a French literary group that created a resurgence in constrained writing and from which many of the constraints that I use originate.

Here are some Oulipian constraints for you, with my examples:

Lipograms, which exclude one or more letters, like “A.”

Write without one letter. This string of sentences does not use the first letter, the one before “B,” in the list of letters which form English speech. One very well-known use of this writing technique is Ernest Vincent Wright’s 1939 novel, which excludes the letter “E” but whose title I must not write due to it using the previously-mentioned letter before “B.” Excluding specific letters will be more difficult. For context, the letter “E” is exceedingly common in English. 

Homovocalism, which has each line use the same vowel pattern. Here I used “I E I O E A E.”

Write with vowel patterns.

This system brings words each try. Swell.

If being bored, attempt.

Letter constraints, such as using only four-letter words.

Make your line with four. Don’t form some huge term. This task will give each word care. Leah uses this tool much. Cram into your head each cool tiny word, like lanx, cyme, ibex, ibis, scry, sybo, iamb – even dhow. Test this game with each cool long word also, with more size each word. Chew over even less size each word, lest thou fail when less than four. Ergo, your turn.

Conclusion

If any of these constraints have worked for you, let us know! If you have any favourites you think I may not have yet used, let me know! Maybe it will force me to write something new.