Guest Blogger: Starving to Write

By Sarah Sturman 

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What does writing mean to me? I'll tell you.

I haven't written anything that I want to in more than a month. This is torture.

I want to write.

Every night I'm sitting at my computer doing homework, desperately trying to increase my slogging pace so I can get on to Figment or Google Docs or Tumblr... and every night I fail.

I itch to write.

Really, I do. I get fidgety and antsy and I can't sit still and I'm not hungry and I don't want to hear you drone on about your newest business endeavor and I don't want to listen to you rant about your math teacher and I really don't want to just sit and calm down for a minute and most of all I want to write.

I need to write.

Last night, I was finished with my homework at eleven pm. I asked my mom if I could write for a little bit, just ten minutes, pretty please. She said no. I changed into pajamas and, slinking into her room, I asked again: please, mama, may I write? No. No, no, no. Go to bed, it's eleven o'clock and you have to get up at six-thirty tomorrow--

I am dying to write.

I ran out of her room and into mine. I jumped into my bed and curled up tight into a ball-- then I cried-- no, sobbed-- no, I was tortured beyond words. Even my special bear couldn't help. And when my special bear can't help, that's dire. But naturally, my mother doesn't know this. She doesn't know, as I do, that seventy-five percent of the muscle tension in my back and neck is a direct consequence of creativity being bottled up. And that each time someone says I can't write tonight-- tonight, when I'm full to bursting with stories and an angry fire-- each time I acquiesce and agree that it's probably for the best, the fire dies. The stories instantly disappear and there is another novel unwritten, another poem kept inside, and another chiropractor's appointment worth of tension added to my neck.

I would kill to write.

The teachers who assign the most homework would go first (Say haha-- it's not a real threat). Whoever said that you could channel your creativity into a school paper or a science report or a research project never had to do that in two nights with seventeen-hour days and five hours each night, not including dinner and all other homework. Sure, I'll just write a five-page history paper arguing whether or not the British could have won the American Revolution if they had gotten their crap together, and I'll put my own personal spin on it and make it interesting and creative and channel all my creative energies into this paper, and then I'll get a whopping ten hours of sleep and an A on the paper. Yeah, whoever said that-- I'd like to meet you in person, give you a big slap in the face, and then ask if you're a writer.

I can't write, I can't read.

Thank you, English teachers; I can't read. No, that wasn't a typo; yes, you read it correctly. I can't read. I can't read poetry without analyzing it. I can't read a book without thinking of the story arc and the writing style. I can't read anything without asking myself what the author's meaning was. Have you ever considered that maybe the character liked the color blue, and that's why his little wagon is blue, and not because the author wants to foreshadow the character's demise? Yes, you have. But that's just not fun, is it? You know what's really not fun? Not being able to read. I can't read.

I am starving to write.

Writing keeps my brain alive. Literally. And it's one of the favorite joys of my life. If I fall out of practice, it becomes a struggle, and I become boring. I can't make up stories on the spot. I become a perfectionist. I am perpetually tired and can't pay attention to anything at all, not even a book or a song. This is torture.

It's a loving relationship I have with writing, one that pushes me over the edge but keeps me sane.

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Meet Sarah

My name is Sarah. I have a very blue room, and I am a member of the Figment writing community. I write to release tension, I write to rant, I write to share.

I am a Hufflepuff to the core, I love pumpkins and sailing and Tolkien, I speak some French and I'm fluent in Lucad, as well as English (Say thanks, Captain Obvious). Sherlock is the only TV show I watch, and along with all the other law-abiding folks, I am positively dying for the next season to come out. I am not a fangirl.

I procrastinate but I don't have a Facebook, I love deeply but I don't really show it, and my dream is to be a (photo)journalist for National Geographic.