DIY; September 12 2022

I haven’t woken up this early this consistently since I was a teenager, and I hated it back then, too.

My kid’s in school! She had a fever on the first day, which meant she missed it, but she was well enough the second day to make it for the latter half. (Her Covid test was negative, and a nurse cleared her to go once she was feeling better.) She had a great time, but still protests every morning that she has to go.

Alas, she’ll get used to it.

Now that I have time in a day to write, though, I haven’t been able to. Today’s the first day in which my schedule isn’t packed up until the moment I have to pick my kid up, and I keep staring at this document, feeling stalled.

I always do this. I go without writing for a little while, and then worry I’ve forgotten how to get the words flowing. The only cure is to actually start typing, but that’s the biggest hurdle.

On the other hand, this is also a great opportunity to start reading. There’s a lot of controversy surrounding ‘you can’t be a great writer without reading’ – some feel this is an ableist take, and they make good points. ADHD is one of the biggest obstacles I’ve personally seen people have, and they love stories. It isn’t a lack of desire preventing them from cracking open a book.

Some people are able to turn to audiobooks instead, but that opens the door to another take – this one just objectively bad – that ‘audiobooks don’t count as reading’. To which I say, give me one good reason why not. What about visually impaired people? They don’t get to enjoy books, then? And even if you’re not visually impaired, your imagination is still engaged, so what’s the problem?

My opinion is, to be a great writer, you have to consume media. It doesn’t matter what kind, just so long as it stirs your mind, gets you thinking, gets you excited. It could be television, podcasts, video games – anything goes!

We’re living in the best time for media, right now. (Not for publishing, but that’s a different beast.) We’re finally seeing diversity in what’s available, and new content can be found all over the place. If you can crave it, it probably exists in some form or another out in the world. And hey, if you can’t find it, then that’s your cue to make it!

Now it’s story time!

‘Inanna’. It was absurd to feel like they knew that name – they couldn’t even remember their own – but it struck a chord somewhere deep in their chest.

“You don’t speak, do you? Or you can’t,” Inanna surmised.

They nodded. For all their attempts, they couldn’t make a sound.