Suffering Writer’s Guilt

There is guilt when you can’t seem to say what you want to say or what you know you’re capable of saying or what you can’t say but should. And more guilt when you know you have to write even when you don’t feel you have anything to say because it’s a skill as much as intuition and you realize you are probably wasting someone’s time as much as not.

There’s also guilt at writing lines that, while true (at least to you), are destructive and dangerous. We wield reality with our words. And sometimes saying something makes it so. That my words might make heartbreak so saddens me, even though I won’t/can’t stop writing them.

When I write of sorrow that came before me (my mother lost a child many years before I was born, for example), I wonder: what have I done? Have I raised the dead? Descecrated the dead? Have I breathed life, only to take it away? Even though my mother won’t read this blog or Since the day I was born, haven’t I wronged her in some way?

I think I may have.