HEARTBREAK

Writing is easy. I could sit down to write something and come up with something passable in an hour or so, something that helps me process a feeling or express a frustration or just feel productive and creative for a moment, with relative ease. Sitting down to write is hard. 

No one looks at this anymore, which is good, because I don't want them to, but there's also something so compelling about a Public Record. About being able to go back and see what I've written, and not in a Word document or scribbled in a journal - though the journal has its own feeling of satisfaction; it's just tempered by the crippling guilt I feel at the inconsistency of it. Typing is easy. No ruling lines and drawing artistic doodles copied directly from Pinterest into my bullet journal. No carefully curated handwriting. Just Times New Roman (Calibri can eat my ass) and the comforting click of the keys, the tactile feedback of something existing that didn't before. 

So here's what I'm going to try. I'm going to try writing prompts. Today's is What does the city sound like at night? 

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She's curled up in her bed, which it's far too hot to be doing, at this time of year, but there's no other position that dulls the sharp ache in her stomach. The pressure of her knees pushing into herself is the only thing that's holding her together, keeping all of the inside things from becoming outside things. Keeping the silent, shaking sobs from wracking her whole body in loud, tearing agony. 

What little noise she makes is covered by the noise carried in through her open window on the breeze, the night punctuated by the thudding base of the club a few blocks away. The sound is loud enough that she could dance to it if she wanted to - has danced to it, on many nights with similar warm breezes and open windows, but without the thudding pain echoing the music and without the complete, suffocating loneliness. 

Eventually, the silent sobbing subsides, her body giving out on even that small exertion of energy. She has nothing left. All she can do is curl tighter around herself, trying to recreate the feeling of her wrapped around her body. All that's missing is the brush of her hair, the scent of sandalwood and vanilla, the whispered giggles and gentle caresses and her hands and her lips and—

All of it. All that's missing is all of it.  

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about: HEARTBREAK

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Here's the problem I always have with writing: once I start, I don't want to stop. I ought to stop but the fact is, I just finished Red, White and Royal Blue (again) and I want to write about love and I want to write about anything with a quarter of the skill of Casey McQuinston but I can never think of anything to write, I just start writing and sometimes it makes something and her book is perfect and include "History, huh?" juxtaposed with "in the halls of memory, some things demand context." Anyway, now I have finished fangirling (I should read that book again), but the thing I love about books like that is they're a reminder that you don't need huge dramatic plot swings and twists and turns. You can have a book about two boys falling in love and also one is a royal and one is the son of the President of the United States and that provides enough tension to act as a compelling backdrop to exploring their romance. No one else cares about this, but this is something I need to write, to understand, to know that I can write something and it's allowed to be tropey and silly and predictable but it will still be mine. 

Okay, enough of that. Let's see what tomorrow brings.