For some time now I have struggled to write more in a week than 6 words on Sunday and 30 words on a Thursday. It hit me in December a few days before Christmas.

I have done a little editing on one story. I even managed a whole fortnight of writing daily once but I couldn’t sustain it beyond that. As a person who wrote every day that’s strange for me.

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I can sometimes manage poetry for Instagram. Poetry is not fiction or nonfiction it exists on it’s own. I am a poet before all else. It expresses and distills. It is usually my voice not a characters.

I can write my newsletter. Facts read, analysed and written. The student in me coming through.

I’ve struggled a bit with reading too but my nonfiction refuge has helped keep me going. There are exceptions and a bit of poetry. The similarity is not lost on me.

As an eternal student I needed to know why. You could argue it’s obvious. I had to grasp the intricacies of my situation enough to write about it, which is I guess a tad ironic.

Last night I wrote this after watching the Newsroom.

I can’t write fiction. Not at this time.

I’m not driven to create a world where I control what happens.

My days are spent looking at reality and dealing with the fact that you couldn’t make it up.

I shunned news for some time. It’s often not pretty or palatable and I needed to sleep at night.

When X started to leak I wanted to join in the exodus, but someone persuaded me not to. They said it was important to stay.

We make our difference inside with the voice we already have not banging on the window trying to be let in so we can see what’s happening our view obscured by those who would wish us not to know.

I said I have spies.

They said they will filter.

They may not recognise what you see as important.

I’ve seen the reporters stood in precarious places getting as close to the story as possible.

Reporters have died because they were in the midst of the action trying to bring the story.

I thought I got it.

I don’t think I did.

Tonight I watched the first episode of the Newsroom.

Fiction from a decade ago reminded me of something fact failed to.

That the truth has many angles, that we need to check sources, that the true story can be hidden from view.

Someone I admire made me pay attention.

She told me to write.

I said no-one will read my words.

She said write anyway.

We have to try.

I realised we may stop being heard but there’s nothing to listen to if we stop talking.

I’m not a journalist. I haven’t got the skills or the training to bring the news or analyse and comment on it.

I’m just a writer.

I don’t even know what I have to say.

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