Pass the Cheese

Someone said something to me last night that hit a nerve. The more I thought about what this person said, the more upset I became. I thought about it most of the night and woke up thinking about it the next morning. I am a stress eater so, to cope I cooked myself a giant bowl of spaghetti and topped it with a copious amount of parmesan cheese. Then I tried to "walk it off". As I walked I kept thinking about the damn cheese and how no matter how far I walked today I would never "walk it off". But I kept walking anyway because I was determined to "walk off" as much of the cheese as I could. This reminded me of writing. "How in the world can parmesan cheese remind you of writing?", you ask.

Well, it is like this... as writers, we often become frustrated with our work. We get writer's block and the words just won't come. Or we feel like no matter how hard we work our writing will never be good enough. Maybe one of our friends or family members is not supportive. They don't understand the hard work, what we write, or why we write at all. So we eat our cheese and we sit on it. Instead of "walking it off", we let the cheese rot in our minds until it is a moldy fungus. If left it grows rancid and the stench suffocates our motivation. It is easy to eat the cheese. To take all the nasty things that are said to you and let them fester in your mind. These things stagnate and keep you from writing, they tell you that you're not good enough and that no matter how much you write you will never amount to anything.

I don't know a writer who has never had a doubt about their own work, and I can almost bet that every writer at some point in their career has eaten the cheese. And you know what? It's okay. Yup, it is okay to eat the damned cheese. It is okay to get frustrated. It is okay to have doubts. But what is not okay is to sit on it. Because when you sit on it, it rots. You have to "walk it off". Figuratively that is, and maybe literally if it helps. Grab a pen, or sit down at the computer and keep writing. It doesn't matter how much cheese is thrown at you, or even how much of it you swallowed. Keep walking. Keep moving forward. You will get there.