January 25, 2023 | FEATURES | By Alexandra Akinchina
About four months ago, I finally took a pause from writing. As a self-proclaimed writer, I thought that taking a step away from the page stripped me of that identity. If I wasn’t writing or pumping out content, could I really call myself a writer? Was I still a storyteller if I wasn’t telling stories?
A long stretch of nothingness preceded my decision to take a pause. It may not have seemed like it on the page, but I was running out of ideas. I wasn’t particularly excited about any project or story. I was rushing to meet a deadline and scraped up anything that I could come up with. What was once fulfilling became dull and uninspiring.
It was clear I needed a break, and yet I still hesitated. Part of me wanted to keep up the image of the writer who always had something to share. If this was my hobby and my passion, why didn’t I feel like doing it anymore?
I had finally hit a roadblock and decided to step away. People always say that it’s scary to start something new, but they fail to mention that it takes courage to stop too. There’s comfort in the familiar, even if the familiar isn’t serving you anymore. Writing had stopped serving me. I knew that if I delayed my break any longer, the quality of my work would suffer.
In retrospect, the pause was exactly what I needed. I felt like I could finally catch my breath. I started focusing on some of my other passions and progressed significantly in the spaces that I had once neglected for writing.
In truth, there was some level of guilt because I was no longer actively writing and publishing work. In some way, I felt like I was falling behind. If I wasn’t writing, then I wasn’t building up my portfolio.
There were times when I would tell my friends stories, and they would say, “You should write about that!” There were times when I would experience something and think to myself “I could write about that.”
However, when it came time to put pen to paper, I couldn’t find the words to perfectly capture a story, an experience, or even a fully-formed thought. I was stuck, and I knew I wasn’t ready to face the craft of writing. I couldn’t find the words to express everything I was feeling or thinking. It’s as if the words didn’t really exist. And if they did, they were slipping, and I couldn’t quite grasp them.
One day, in a bout of restlessness, I started scribbling words on a page and collecting them into poems. They were fragments of thoughts, reflections, and emotions. The poems alone wouldn’t make sense to anyone else reading them, but it was the first time I had felt like I truly captured what I was feeling.
As the months went by, I found myself jotting down poem after poem whenever inspiration struck. I gave myself permission to let go and let the pen carry me. There was something therapeutic about the process, and I had found myself back in writing mode.
I never really thought that poetry would be the reason that writing would find me again. The process constantly teaches me to let go. Poetry let me grasp the words that once seemed out of reach.
When I wasn’t writing, I no longer lived in the individual characters. I lived in the space in between the words. It may seem empty, but it serves its purpose. It was the pause that I needed to find the words once more.