A Love Song

I have written passionately about writing, given advice to new writers, told them to write what they know, what they love, to write from the gut and from the heart.

I have struggled lately getting words on paper. I’ve lost my passion, the deep joy and pleasure that writing gives to me. I want it back.

I miss the eagerness, the rush, the routine of getting up early each day, sleepy but excited to begin again.

I miss being so caught up in character and rhythm and style and plot that the world diminishes to a distant thing.

I miss the hours of total concentration, and afterward getting up, stiff and exhausted, but also feeling completely satisfied.

Does this sound like a love song? Baby come back. I need you. I promise I’ll do it better.

I would leave endless voicemails and texts, sit outside and cry, listening to sad love songs, but my lover exists only in my head.

Don’t make me wait. Come back to me now.

I remember when I would go to sleep thinking bout you, and wake up from a dream, and rush to the keyboard to get it all down before it faded away. I remember how good it felt to get it exactly right.

I remember everything, the unfinished drafts that didn’t work, but even they were so much fun. The ones that did work, and went through second and third and fourth drafts, each one becoming more and more what I wanted them to be.

If you come back to me, I promise it will be just like before, only this time, I promise not to piss you off.

I’ve tried nearly everything as a substitute for the passion. Outlining, such a bore. It doesn’t have you capacity to suck me inside the story and make me tremble with excitement.

Stealing stuff from unused, discarded pieces. There is a reason they are in the discard pile.

I’ve tried reading old work, but it only makes me wonder where the good stuff came from. I know it was you.

Why did the passion, the fire, leave this relationship between me and writing? Why won’t it come back home?

There is an old and often true saying that there is a country song that fits every occasion. In this case, I will use Bonnie Raitt. There could be a Bonnie Raitt song for every circumstance in life.