A Loss For Words

Reading and writing are in my blood, you know.  My mom always told the story of the first night she and my dad brought me home from the hospital after I was born; my dad propped me in his lap and read the daily newspaper to me.  And this continued to be the theme of my early life; being read to.

As far back as I can remember we always had kids books in the house, and my mom would read them to me. After I reached a certain age I am sure I wasn't interested in listening to my dad read the newspaper, but my mom read any number of books to me. I can't remember them all, but I do remember every year in school during the book fair I would order a pile of books.

One series I remember from elementary school was Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books.  I remember a couple different series by Beverly Cleary; Ramona Quimby and all of her adventures, and Henry Huggins. The Encyclopedia Brown series about a boy detective, those were fun books.  Oh, oh, and I remember my brothers collection of the Hardy Boys' mysteries.  My sister must have had the Nancy Drew books, at least some of them, because I remember them very, very vaguely. 

In fourth grade I specifically remember a book called "The Wheel on the School."  But I just now had to look up the author; Meindert Dejong, a Dutch-born American who won the 1955 Newbery Medal for Children's literature for that book.  

I also remember that when I was in fourth grade my brother, who is 10 years older than I am, got me a the 4 book set of J R R Tolkien's popular hobbit series; The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  At about 9 years old I was mostly interested in The Hobbit, because the trilogy was a bit above my head maturity-wise.  But from about middle school onward I read the entire set of books once a year for the next 20+ years, and as I matured I got something new from it every time.

During those years I also enjoyed writing bits and pieces of things myself; poems, short silly stories.  But I had trouble coming up with original themes.  In high school and college I concentrated more on poetry, and I recently found a notebook with a collection of poems I'd penned back in the 90s.  Most of it silly stuff, written with the misbegotten idea of being profound.  But some of it is interesting.  Ha!

Now, at this particular time I find myself in the position of being like my title states above; at a loss for words.  I haven't been blogging here frequently.  Nor have I been writing much for my monthly writer's class.

We meet every 3rd Thursday in Buffalo. Last month we were to try our hand at poetry.  I came up with nothing really original but quickly typed up something to that effect; except in rhyme.  Ha!  This month we were to just write something; no suggestions or guidelines, just bring something you have written.  

This morning I sat and looked at the screen for 15-20 minutes and came up with nothing. I tried to work on one of my kids stories; but nothing.  So I rewrote a kids poem I'd written back in the 90s.

 It appears my original creativity has dried up for a bit.  The stress of trying to figure out what to eat that doesn't give me bizarre heart palpitations, or intense indigestion, seems to have killed what few of the creative words I have has the past couple of years.

Well.  I seem to have  nattered on pretty well for this post, so maybe I will settle down mentally and the fiction will flow again. Until next time.