i'm not a real writer

i miss reading good books. i have amazing books waiting for me on the shelves in my room, but i'm just moving through them so slowly. when i have a demanding schedule, reading is my escape. but work is slow and i get to have too many lazy days, so i end up getting myself out of rhythm. the reading muscle is the same as the writing muscle, and it's pretty weak right now.

once upon a time i had it in my mind that i could, possible should, be a writer. like a real writer. i would have a little cottage somewhere with a back deck that looked out over a lake, and i'd sit at a desk and type on an antique typewriter. i dont know, maybe i would teach and then spend the summers writing books at the lakehouse. then again, seeing as how my last post was in february -- which doesn't completely reflect the amount of time i've spent spelling out words and sentences and paragraphs and complete thoughts, but should certainly tell you something about my ability to complete something worth publishing (although i don't tell people about my blog and therefore have 3 readers, i mean my mother doesn't even know i have one of these things, i still feel the need for my posts to have some level of quality) -- i would say i have a problem with this idea of being an actual writer.

and here's the problem. i've always hit the same wall when i sit down to write. it's not a matter of starting something, but of finishing. i went to a writer's conference a while back and jumped from workshop to workshop, and the one bit of information that i will never need to consult my notes about is the idea that a storyteller must tell his story before diving into anything else. and so every effort to express myself haults because i have no ending to my story. i could make it work in college because college guys are allowed to write music with three chords and vague lyrics. there was no need to conclude, you just go back in for one more chorus.

i digress.

perhaps someday i'll see myself as having moved through some kind of ending and into another phase of life. maybe that wont ever really be clear to me. if it is, maybe i'll have something i can finish. i'd like to have a story worth writing down, not for others, but just to unclog my mind. i get these little hints of ideas that i just can't develop because i always end up back in my own un-ending story.

i'm sick of gray. i don't think the lakehouse and the typewriter are the goals, i think i'm just ready for something more.