"I'm a Writing and Publishing major...crisis."

Every day I am less convinced that I'm a writer.

For one, I don't like to write. I put it off and put it off and only do it if I have to or if I've convinced myself that I have to. I don't write for fun and I have three journals in my room right now that are about a quarter full, having been abandoned after I got fed up with the content: too whiny, too childish, too mundane, too ordinary. I constantly buy journals, thinking this time, I will write beautiful things and perfectly capture into words what my life is right now, so that someday, years from now, I can look back and say, Ah, yes! That was me. But it isn't me, it's me trying to be what I think me is, and it's all very clumsy and poorly disguised and a bad skit.

Furthermore, I have more and more trouble putting my thoughts into words, and shouldn't that be second nature to a writer? I used to think so, and it used to be so simple and I never understood people who couldn't write - just write what you think, I would say. But now I arrange words in my head and see perfect, flowing, beautiful language and when I go to put it into print it all topples and I forget and whatever I was trying to say disappears with a shrug and I sigh and put my pen down.

And worst of all I don't know what to write. Even if this is just a phase and I really CAN write, it doesn't matter because I have nothing to say. I'm getting tired of my jokey-joke Hey'dja-ever-notice, What's-the-deal-with observative writing. Sometimes I don't want to be biting or humorous or satirical - sometimes I want to describe a thought or a feeling in such a way that it will choke your swallow and make your throat burn and your eyes water. I want to make all the air go out of your lungs and make you wait, wait, until my next sentence fills them back up again. And I can't, because all my words, if there are any at all, get trapped in my teeth and in my fingernails and stay in me and make me swell until I feel I might burst.

A girl in my hostel in Buenos Aires asked me what I was studying at school. When I told her writing, she replied, "Oh, that is such a wonderful gift to have."

Wouldn't it be, though?