Words.

I hate writing.

"Interesting," you're probably saying. "What exactly are you doing this for then?"

Excellent question. Why am I still writing after making that statement? I guess it's because I'm starting to get the itch again--I finished my final writing class six months ago, avoided putting my thoughts to paper this whole time, and then, as always happens when summer turns to fall and the air becomes crisp with a sense of clarity, began to feel like I could write again.

I say "could," because recently I've been feeling like I can't. I used to write all the time. I have a stack of old notebooks filled from cover to cover and stuffed with scrap paper, spilling over with writing I did in high school, and my freshman year of college, before I declared creative writing as my minor. Maybe that, my short spiral into an unpleasant area of my mind, and feeling like I was being stifled by school, is how I lost my taste for writing. Or maybe, as I thought for a while, I was just not meant to be a writer.

Writing classes solidified that train of thought. I know that you never get better at anything if you don't work with people who are better than you, but next to my classmates, I felt this crushing sense of inferiority. I couldn't shake it. All I felt was they were getting better, motivated by some source drive and passion that I couldn't seem to find, and I was sitting in the corner of the room, wondering what I was doing there and hating every word, sentence, and paragraph that passed through my brain.

So I stopped writing.

I mentioned this to someone the other day and they asked if the classes had at least made me better. If they had asked me six months ago I would have spat out a quick and bitter no, but looking back from where I am now, I think I can say yes. Or at least a solid maybe. I learned new things about perfecting the craft I want to call mine, but what I've been lacking is the practice. I've spent the entire summer dodging questions from people about what I'm going to do when I graduate, avoiding the lurking shameful feeling when someone says, "So you still want to be a writer? How's that going?" and just questioning everything I've done for the past three years.

"You should start writing again," I was told. And I've been thinking--why shouldn't I? I could start writing again. I should start writing again. I will start writing again.