Is a writer still a writer if he isn't writing?

For the last year or so (if I'm honest, nearly two years now) writing has been far more difficult than it should be. By writing, I mean anything that requires putting words in a cunning order. Be that blog posts, letters, novels, or really anything. I managed to complete NaNoWriMo 2017, but it was torture and well, quite poorly written. For NaNoWriMo 2018 I never got past 14k words. 

I have always considered myself a writer, not because I had published anything or because I was always writing something, but because I loved writing. Whenever the opportunity presented itself I would write happily away into the night. whether it was instructions on some process or system for work, a letter to someone, a short story, a blog post, or anything the words just poured out (not always good, but easily). This is no longer the case.

NaNoWriMo Once and Again.

Last November I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and was a winner. This was the first time since I was in middle school (7th grade maybe) that I had completed anything I had started writing. 

NaNoWriMo FTW!

So, NaNoWriMo went well. I managed to hold it together for the last week and in fact finished a couple days early. Well, I passed the 50,000 word mark early, I made some changes to the ending a few times right up to November 30th.

Where do I go from here.

As I am sure the one or two of you who read this blog with any regularity have noticed I have not posted in quite some time now. The single largest hurdle to writing for me has always been the idea. Once I have an idea I can generally write three or four blog posts but without that idea, nothing else works.

Writing in a coffee shop.

Normally I write at home after the house has gone to sleep because it’s quiet and there is nothing else requiring my attention. I tend to do my best work late in the evening, I don’t know if it’s because of the minimum amount of distractions or simply because I  am a night person and naturally more effective at night. Recently though - for probably less than a month - I have been writing during my weekly coffee klatch on Saturday mornings.