Why do I seem to have so much trouble writing?  Why can’t I seem to form the habit?  I might have found the answer in yet another movie quote. One of my favs is the not-quite-old-enough-to-be-a-classic, “Throw Momma from the Train.”  Perhaps it is because I can somehow relate with the protagonist, Larry.  Not because he is a frustrated divorced literature professor but because he has serious writer’s block.  The movie is funny and has many memorable lines but the one that sticks most often in my mind and haunts me regularly is the one spoken by Larry (played by Billy Crystal) to his class of misfits: “Remember, a writer writes.”  And therein lies the problem.

I wouldn’t say I have a great imagination but I have a fairly active one.  I imagine all kinds of scenarios such as me fifty pounds heavier or what I would do if I won the lottery.  I imagine myself walking again.  I imagine craft ideas or sewing projects.  I imagine myself a published author.  The problem is, most of the stuff I imagine never makes it out of my mind and into reality.  Granted some of that I have no control over.  But a great deal of it I do.

If a writer writes then I am not a writer because I don’t actually get most of what I think or “write” down on paper.  I mean, sometimes I do because obviously I’m writing now but most of my really creative stuff stays stuck in my brain, inaccessible at the moment that I sit down at the computer.  I can sometimes access it through voice recording but the super good stuff stops short at the connection between brain and fingers.  And the real casualty in this is you, dear reader, because you will never know what you’re missing.  I am, after all, a writer in my mind.