I’ve felt very aimless the last few months. Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty to do. I’ve got a wedding to plan – PSA: please don’t be surprised if somewhere down the line this turns almost exclusively into a wedding blog – I’ve got my job, and of course there are the dozens of daily tasks that occupy the majority of life. But I still feel as though I have no direction. Even in those instances in which I have a destination, I rarely know where to begin. My blogging, unfortunately, has been no different.

An article keeps popping up on my Pinterest feed: How to Start a Blog in Ten Minutes. I click it every time, hoping for tips on finding a content theme and sticking to a schedule. Every time, I’m disappointed; it’s a literal how-to for installing WordPress and finding domain hosting and the like. That’s not what I need help with, I groan as I close the tab. The article opens with a fairly standard demonstration of the problem it intends to solve. “Do you have a story to tell?”

I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that I love words. I live and breathe them. I devour books and cherish the other lives I’ve had the pleasure to live. I revel in learning new words. And when I have a story to tell, I take great pains to tell it right. But lately I haven’t had a story to tell.

I’m a writer without words.

I have no problem when I have a purpose. I’ve written business emails for my fiance, I’ve written nasty reviews for my coworker, and I’ve written Facebook posts to promote the business. Have goal, will wordsmith. But it’s like my creativity has dried up. I know, mostly, what I want to “be when I grow up.” And one would think that, with a goal like “get published,” I would have all the words I need. Perhaps the pressure just makes me feel inadequate. The thought of someone passing judgment on whether my stories will make money suddenly makes those stories feel so trite, so overdone.

The best piece of advice I ever got was, “Write the book you would want to read.” If it touches you, you can bet it’ll touch someone else. Plus you do better at things you enjoy. And yet, I can’t help but think my potential audience is too small, that my writing is too juvenile for anybody to buy it. So my muse spirited herself away to Malta and I’m left with no inspiration. I would do almost anything to get my mojo back at this point. I’ve tried 30 Day Challenges, writing prompts, NaNoWriMo. I can’t even consistently think of topics for the blog.

It got me thinking. Am I still a writer if I have no words? It’s like a cook with no ingredients. I still have pots and pans and spoons. But with no food to cook, with no stories to tell, I’m just another wanna-be with nothing but Celtx and lofty dreams.

Because of that, I’ve been trying to give myself a more concrete purpose. There was a scriptwriting competition I wanted to enter, so I got my script to a point where I felt confident submitting it. I still needed my fiance to click the final “Submit” button, but at least it happened. There are a few other stories that have been stewing in my head for a while, so I’m trying to motivate myself to actually write them. If anyone has any good ideas for keeping motivated, I’d love to hear them. In the meantime, I’m just going to keep chugging along as best as I can.