The truth will set you free.

Well kids, I did try. I mean, I sat there, laptop firmly across knees, fingers poised, Erica Jong in her 600 glorious pages, perched on the sofa arm.

It was like waiting to be struck by lightening.

What did I expect?

The keyboard was covered with cobwebs, as was my brain. I wrote what I knew. I wrote about my family and a few vague realisations. BUT, couldn't stop myself from going beck over each fumbled line, and editing. A commar here, deletion there. Before the poor things had sucked in a first breath, I was smothering them with criticism. The truth is, that for a long time, the only place I've felt comfortable unleashing my words, is here. Where it seems okay to tell the truth.

And somehow, that's what I struggle to produce most of the time, truth. It's what makes Erica fabulous. The heartbeat of it pulses through the classics. It's usually the key ingredient to anything moving. So, why, with this in mind, do I find it so evasive?

I've been focusing so hard on the bigger picture, the next five years, landmarks, the things drilled into us as children: objectives. That I've lost sight of the smaller picture. In fact, what would suit me well, is a firm grasp on the tiniest of pictures. Reading is helping with the cobwebs. I'm writing poems in my head again, when I drift off to sleep. A dripping tap provokes an idea for a character. But the real battle is between myself and the editor, the very same editor who pronounces each shivering sentence 'boring, inadequate, already said.'

Tonight I will go home and try again. I need to realise that it doesn't need to be good, just present. Maybe good will come later, maybe it won't. But with the complete absence of words, I'm just an office girl, who once had a silly little dream. Who frittered away thousands pursuing that same dream, and now puts it away, in some shoe box on a high shelf.

You know, we dedicate a lot of time to complaining about others. The ones who drag us back, pull us down, and generally block us from our potential. But in the end, it is ourselves we can hold accountable. Our very own minds who throw up excuses, woven so tightly, that it takes us years to realise. I'm going to wake up one day, at forty, and disappoint myself so much, I can't get out of bed.

It's time to start telling the truth.