Start in the middle. That’s what I tell my students. “Mrs. Fanning, I know what I want to say but I can’t figure out how to start.”

“Skip it,” I say. “Start in the middle. Then we’ll go back and write the opening.”

Or we won’t.

Sometimes the best writing just drops a reader down in the middle of the action and tears off without warning.

But as I sit here and stare at the blank white screen and that flashing black cursor, I wonder, “If I don’t know what I want to say and I start in the middle, will I figure it out along the way?”

Writing isn’t a “hobby” and it isn’t like riding a bicycle. It’s a cutting of oneself open and bleeding out onto the page. It’s brain and muscle and sinew and Feeeeelingsssssss. It’s a practice and a discipline. And I haven’t practiced or disciplined it much at all in a very long while.

I thought I was waiting on the Muse to return after churning out two novels. But it’s been a hot minute since I handed those off to the Purgatory of Publishing Dreams and the Muse is the kind of random friend who responds to texts of “Where r u?” with a bubble and three ominous dots that hang on the screen for two years: (…)

I told myself that while I haven’t developed my own writing discipline, I’ve very much developed my practice by helping 150 other budding wordsmiths fine-tune their skills during the school year. And, yes, this is true. But it’s too easy to lose track of my own voice in the clamor of others’ halting tones.

So I do this instead. I black out my screen so I can’t check my email and I tell myself, “Butt in chair. Words on screen. Do it or die.”

Not physical death, no. But the Voice inside will die if not taken out and exercised once in a while. Not for work, not for student feedback, but for no other goal than pleasure.

Ok, I lie.

Writing isn’t always pleasurable.

It helps when I have a good idea and the thing I am writing is just for fun, but, even then there is a discipline to making myself sit down and put the idea into words. In fact, I’m making me write right now and I’m not sure I’m enjoying it at all.

Lying again.

I like it a little bit.

It’s even harder than I remember, but that’s because I’m out of practice and my Voice is all creaky with underuse.  This little “essay” is hardly even a warm-up, but it’s the first set of scales up and down the QWERTY keys in awhile, so I can hardly expect an aria to sing out from the page. I’m ok with a painful CROAK at first trill.

CROAK.

CROAK.

CROAK.

(…)