I am a writer who doesn’t write. I hide from my pen and paper like they are conspiring to give me some incurable disease—hope and accomplishment. Sometimes I am nearly in tears because I want to write so badly, yet I can’t find any inspiration let alone the words to express myself. I feel like everything I write is just a rehash of materials that have been covered 100 times before, especially when I write about Wicca. I want to blame Llewellyn and authors who pop out derivative books every six months. I want to blame public school, which sucked me dry of my creative spirit. Most of all, I want to blame myself for failing before I’ve even started because I am too much for a perfectionist to risk making mistakes and writing something truly awful.
If I fail at being a writer, what else do I have left? Can a failed writer still write?