Once upon a time, I was young and bold and fierce. I’d happily let anyone read what I wrote and I didn’t care. Writing was my life, my love, my passion, and my heart. I lived and breathed to write. It didn’t even matter what I was writing about, really; I had an opinion on everything. In the past few years, though, a disturbing trend has happened. The language I used to live for has suddenly become the thing I try not to think about too much. It has been years since I felt that fire of creativity, the one that feels like my soul is on fire and my brain is catching, like, if I don’t write, this very second, I’ll explode. I feel empty, broken, used up. And it took another writer offering very simply to take a look at some of my work for me to realize how very large this problem has become.

It did not start out this way. When I was eighteen, someone came into my life that made me embrace writing with a devotion bordering on obsession. She loved music as much as I did and, in those early days, we riffed off the lyrics of our favorite songs and poems with complete abandon. My friend and I would sit at her mother’s kitchen table with glasses of homemade iced tea, writing furiously, trying to capture every thought before it was gone. The more we did it, the more addicted I became. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t set aside time to do it. Every single day was an endless supply of inspiration. I carried a notebook with me at all times and would often pause mid-step or pull off the road to jot down a random line or idea.

My friend and I developed a habit of trading our notebooks, which were filling up with poetry and thoughts so fast that we kept a stack of spares. It became this never ending conversation, each of us answering the writing of the other with our own ideas. I was constantly looking for new ways to say things and always writing with her in mind. Her reactions to my notebooks became the driving force for everything I wrote. We were shaking each other awake to our own lives, full of the beauty and tragedy of being young and in love with writing. We were making each other take a closer look at the world around us and loving what we found.

Then came the book. Writing Down the Bones was the discovery that shaped my adulthood. Tucked in with a hundred books about plotting a novel or writing a memoir, almost hidden between books that promised to make anyone the greatest writer ever (seriously, like, EVER!) the slim volume only caught my attention because of the use of bones in the title. I have a lifelong fascination with anything even remotely spooky and my first thought was that this was a book about writing ghost stories. It wasn’t; it was something much better. That book, along with all the others Natalie Goldberg has written, became fuel. My best friend and I traded it back and forth, reading aloud from it the way other girls might read Emily Dickenson. We were in love with the book, the words, our pens, and our own ordinary, wonderful lives.

I have always felt that the other relationships in my life, even the romantic ones, have been trying desperately to be what I had with my writing partner. It was effortless. We were inside each other’s heads, closer than sisters, more intimate than lovers. Like drug addicts, we fed each other’s addiction and obsession. We fueled our writing with the passion and focus of each other. Those were the years that shaped the writer I am and I cannot think of a single regret.

Lately, though, particularly the last five years, writing has become more and more a job to me. Gone are the days when I clung to my notebook with tight fingers, dragging it to malls and movies and concerts as if it was more precious than any money I might be carrying. Gone are the moments that once drove my ex mad, when I would stop mid-conversation because I needed to write something down so my friend could read it later. Often, late at night, after I’d spent the day trying not to look at my desk or think about how dry my words felt, how forced, I would wonder what happened. I love words as much as I ever have, maybe even more. I still devour books like they might all disappear tomorrow. I still find miniature obsessions in a multitude of different subjects, from philosophy to beekeeping. I still love the characters which spring into my mind with their stories, love discovering their secrets and exploring their thoughts. I still love writing when the rhythm is there and everything is fitting itself together like the pieces of a puzzle. It was just that, more and more, there is no rhythm to it. I feel as if I’m working hard for a single drop of inspiration. I avoid my notebooks and make excuses to put off picking up my pen, always horribly aware that they really are just excuses.

My life sometimes seems to be centered around boxes and the unending question ‘do I really want to keep that’. I’m always preparing for a move, recovering from a move, or trying to get used to a new, foreign place. There are plenty of adventures: getting lost while trying to find the grocery store, nearly getting flattened by a lory when I look the wrong way for oncoming traffic, figuring out how to say ‘hi, I’m a dumb American, please help me’ in a new language. So why the block? What went wrong? Why hast mine muse deserted me? Until Friday evening, I could only have given you the driest and most pathetic of answers. I didn’t know what was wrong and was often moved to tears of frustration over it; all the joy writing had once brought me was gone. In fact, I was considering that it might be time for a new direction that didn’t include writing at all. It had become just another thing to torture myself for not doing and if I couldn’t have the love affair, I didn’t want to write anymore. Then something happened.

My Twitter account goes through stages of frantic activity and abandonment. Social media seems almost poisonous at times and I often run from it when I’m in an unhappy place, though, on at least one occasion, it has rescued me from myself. Recently, I began to visit my Twitter again, mostly to know what my favorite actor was up to and because, sometimes, I find the tweets of other writers comforting and helpful. It was a mutual interest in my favorite actor which led to the first truly shocking revelation I’ve had in years.

I’ve always been a loner. I am socially inept and not really interested in changing, thus I am quite often the weirdo lurking in the shadows at a party, trying to avoid being seen. I typically have one or two close friends and most often only one of them is a writer – if any of them are – thought I do believe that everyone can write, if they really want to.

I tend to care too deeply for people and repeated lessons that others are rarely so open or comfortable with such an emotional friend has caused me to withdraw from social interactions. I was never very good at it anyway, and I like my own company just fine. That doesn’t mean I don’t have people I love and seek out, it just means I don’t have (or want) that many. My first writing partner and I had an intense relationship. What else could it be? We read each other’s hopes and dreams, each feeding off the revelations, ideas, and beliefs of the other. Very little, if anything, was withheld. We were the keepers of each other’s deepest secrets. It was a relationship of trust so complete that I often felt she was my twin, that we knew each other even before birth. We knew each other so well that it was as though we had our own, secret club. However, life had to happen. I was moving all the time and she was caught up in her own concerns. We grew apart. Distance, time, and circumstance led us down separate paths and long months would pass without contact. We lost that ability to hand over our raw writing, to trust that the other person would be kind as well as honest, even when criticism was necessary. Eventually, the relationship came to an end.

So when another writer on Twitter kindly offered to read something after I’d vented my current frustrations with writing, my reaction was not what I would have expected. My heart began to pound. I couldn’t breathe. My brain squealed to a painful halt and when it started to work again, it was with a desperate scream of I don’t have anything good enough. My inner critic went into overdrive, hitting me with a barrage of reasons why I should promptly jump the next plane home and get on with an exciting career in fast food service.

When writing is your life, it’s hard to hide from yourself. I write fiction, but so much of what I see, hear, or feel goes into it that my writing practices are page after page of self-exploration, of finding the right words for that color or this feeling. I spent a good many years in creative writing classes or handing over my notebook to my best friend. I am – and always have been – used to having readers. So this sudden terror was perplexing. This simple offer was making me question my own existence and how much I really wanted to continue putting pen to paper. It isn’t as if this question hasn’t come up since my writing partner and I stopped talking. It was never this serious, though. It is usually an idle, exasperated thought when I’m fighting yet another round of writer’s block, which has become such a constant house guest that I know how it takes its coffee. I’ve accepted the hard facts, welcomed the monetary struggle and the constant pressure of an artistic life. I have gone to great lengths to accept myself for the kind of writer I am and to stop wishing to be any other writer and never once did I sit down to write the Great American Novel that destroys so many writers before they can learn how to properly use an Oxford comma. Now, one offer to just take a look at my work and I’m considering McDonalds a good career alternative? Pardon me, but what the actual fuck?

The response in my head was violent. “I am a writer!” I shouted at myself. “I’ve put three books out there! Okay, I’m having trouble getting four and five past edits (or getting interested in even looking at them), but so what? Everyone has an off day… year… or so! I have hundreds of notebooks (I really do). I am used to others reading my work and to reading for them! Okay, not for a while, but… okay, a long while, but… okay, wait, what?”

This stream of thought kept me up all night. A hollow ache was filling my chest, coming with the very disturbing feeling that I haven’t been enjoying my writing for some time, that it has become something I try to escape every day. That made me ask myself the question I think I’ve been dreading since I started avoiding my desk. Do I really want to continue writing? The answer was swift, honest, and a great relief. Yes. I want to write. But the second part of the answer was a little less comforting. I want to love to write again. The hollow, unhappy feeling grew. I wished there was someone I could talk to about this, someone who would understand. Someone like my old partner, who could tell me why I was so unhappy. That is when I realized that I am actually lonely. The knowledge came with all the weight of a deep, disturbing epiphany, the sort that takes your breath away and changes everything you thought you knew about yourself. I am lonely. Not for a lover or a friend to go to the movies with. Not for small talk or a warm body in bed. It is so much simpler (and in some ways more complicated) than that. I am lonely for a reader. More specifically, I’m lonely for the First Reader.

What is the First Reader? These are the people in a writer’s life that are most often other writers. They are the people who know grammar is only important after the words are right, who know what it’s like to throw punctuation out the window for a draft or two, who know the muse is not some glittering fairy but a demanding, sometimes petulant, child – the sort that is always sticky around the edges and wailing endlessly for puppies/ponies/toys. These are the people who weep over a sentence that catches the moment before a last breath, not out of pity for the character, but in admiration for the language. These are the people who live for words and know just how much of a gift they are. I am a First Reader, or was until I lost my partner. And that hollow, aching fear which wanted to send me racing to the nearest McDonalds to ask the most important question in the universe (would you like fries with that)? That was me realizing that it takes courage to be a writer, but more than that. It takes very special friends. Ultimately, that fear, that sudden pain, was me realizing that my partner is really gone for good, that I need to let go of her and decide what I am going to do about me. It was me realizing that I must either find another First Reader, someone who feels that same flush of excitement I do when they pick up a pen, or I need to find a different life. Maybe there are writers out there that don’t really need the company of other writers, that don’t need the motivation of talking about the ghosts of dragons and the color of daffodils being the color of wishes (because those are the conversations that keep us thinking). But I don’t believe that. I think all of us need some kind of partner, someone who can share our excitement and fear, who can keep our secrets and know the difference between kindness and coddling, and who needs all of that from us.

Writers need other writers. This was the thing I took away from my conversation on Twitter. This was the thing that has been weighing me down and it took another writer to tell me what I needed. We are necessary to each other. Yes, we are a solitary crowd. But too much time alone can drown our inner voice in silence. We need to nourish and inspire each other. It’s true that writing is something best done alone. But it is not true that we always must be alone. Walden can have his retreat from humanity. But, in the end, he needs to come back to it as well. We need to share. Not just with the multitudes of people who will read the book or article and move on, but with another word addict who will find their own thoughts and beliefs and excitements flaring up in response. The end of this tale isn’t really an end. I’ve decided McDonalds is going to have to wait – though I’m sure they are suffering for lack of my fry knowledge. I will be returning to school in fall, but I’m not planning on leaving my muse, sticky and frustrating as she might be, for a job with the criminally insane just yet. Instead I have reached out to a lady who has often served as an editor for me… and who’s been putting up with me since we were riding our ponies double. We talked about being alone and writer’s block. Then I promised her this blog post and to do something to get me outside of myself a little. The proof for me is that ten minutes into a conversation with her, this post began to write itself. For the first time in a long time, I found rhythm in the words.

To the talented and inspiring Poppy Augarde, thank you. My struggles may not be over, but the key to defeating dragons is in knowing their names. I hope you’ve enjoyed this and that it might explain a few things I couldn’t quite articulate at the time. Here’s to amazing actors and their ability to bring people to the right place at the right time. And to Miss Lisha, who is my First Reader for this… my hair isn’t blue, I have no plans to jump off any bridges or out of any airplanes, but I am signing up for a rock climbing class so please, please, please put away your cliché cannon, I surrender!