Putting it Down

I'm not quite sure why I've had such a hard time putting the words down lately. A friend asked me this over drinks one night not long ago. We'd finally managed, after weeks of conflicting schedules, to meet in the cool September evening on a street corner in Chelsea--a location chosen for no reason other than its equidistant proximity from her apartment and my office. Wine poured, cigarette lit, we launched eagerly into that scattered kind of catch-up people do when it's been much too long. Racing from my new job to her new-old boyfriend to the mutual friend in absentia and, of course, the book club that only lasted a couple weeks but which brought us together (in person) for the first time.

"I expected there to be something good like the last time," she told me when the conversation drifted (inevitably) to the blogs which we both had admittedly been neglecting as of late. A touch of disappointment was audible in her voice--or perhaps it was merely my self-imposed guilt. I knew what she was referring to and she wasn't the only one of my friends surprised to not have found anything "good" in the previous days.

"I know, I know, I know..." I said, nodding my head and taking a sip of wine. "Well my laptop isn't working..." I started with the usual explanation, but then stopped, my eyes fixed on the couples passing down the street--shirts tight, arms linked, oblivious to the world...details logged for some future composition. She's a writer too, and if not her then whom else to tell the truth?

"Really, it's just not ready to come out yet, I think. It's all there kind of building up, but I'm not quite sure how to write it..."

And I guess that's really what it boils down to. I've never been very good about writing every day. I'll try, working in spurts, but really preferring the haphazard midnight moments of inspiration. The funny thing is that I have the stories...I write them all out in my head, laying on my bed, watching the sunlit patterns on my bedroom wall. I work out the dialogue, the colors, the reflections, and shadows...all of it. I laugh or cry or simply revel in how raw it feels, but it's that final step--translating it all to paper (or the screen, in my case) that seems to evade me lately.

I've been here before, in this space between daydreams and storytelling, and I know that soon enough it will all come tumbling out and it will be good and I will read it and tweak it over and over again in that perpetual search for the perfect phrase.

"It'll show up in a couple weeks, I'm sure," I told her. A promise more to myself than anyone else.