I believe I hexed myself. Several months ago, nodding like a bobble-head doll in agreement with the last person who lectured me on the virtues of creative discipline, I vowed to give up my haphazard ways and write every day. I set a one-year deadline to complete the writing program I’m halfway through, at which time I’ll be required to have a publishable manuscript. Sounded like a reasonable plan at the time.

In retrospect, not so much.

My free-spirited muse didn’t like the daily regimen. He skipped town in the dead of night and I haven’t seen him since. I expected better of him. After all, he’s young and in good shape. Actually, he’s ripped. And he has the most amazing… But I digress.

I don’t know why I thought it would work, the writing every day thing. I’m both uninspired and unhappy in classes that require writing on demand. I go blank, can’t think of a single sentence worth putting on paper. One of my friends enjoys writing exercises that begin, “My most memorable road trip was…” I don’t, and she doesn’t understand why.

That’s easy.

It puts me in a bad mood. Turns me surly. Makes me feel incompetent and clumsy and unimaginative.

While I struggle to remember if I’ve ever been on a road, on a trip, or even in a car, my friend dashes off three scintillating paragraphs about driving cross-country to visit Aunt Henrietta, who used to be Uncle Henry, and now Uncle Henry – excuse me – Aunt Henrietta and Mom look like twins and that was a hoot until Mom saw Dad playfully slap Aunt Henrietta on the fanny and even though he said it was mistaken identity it caused a big row so Mom and Aunt Henrietta are on the outs and Mom didn’t speak to Dad all the way home from Des Moines to Dallas.

Now that’s a memorable road trip.

Desperate to find a way to jump-start my writing, I decided to journal. I bought a smooth Montblanc pen and a leather binder with creamy thick paper. Oh, I was committed. A glass of cheap red wine close by, I filled page after page with musings and quotes and bits of things remembered. I kept at it for several months. One day, a classmate asked how my book was coming along.

“Just fine,” I said, “thanks for asking.”

It was a big fat lie.

I had not written another word – not a line, or paragraph, or chapter – of the memoir I’ve committed to finish. Maybe I’m paralyzed by high expectations, both mine and others’. Expectations I’m not sure I can live up to. Maybe I’m afraid of failure. Or of success. Whatever the reason, I allowed another distraction to use up my psychic energy and swallow great meaty chunks of my time.

So I don’t journal anymore. I don’t Facebook either. Or Tweet.

I once saw a T-shirt that read, “I don’t write, I simply take dictation.” There have been moments when I’ve known that magical feeling, and my writer friends tell me they, too, have been humbled by times when writing is effortless. But then the sexy muse who moved my fingers over the keyboard like it was a Ouija board lost interest.

We’d never been apart before. He was always there, seducing me with his short sentences and playful verbs. Toward the end, I noticed him staring off into space when I was depending on him to dazzle me with a phrase, a character, a twist to the storyline. I can’t believe he left me to fend for myself.

It still stings. But I’m determined to stop pining. After all, he dumped me without so much as a fare-thee-well. Who needs him? I’m finished with threesomes. I’m ready for a one-on-one relationship.

I make an overture.

Sitting alone with my computer, I’m as awkward and uncomfortable as if it were our first date. The small talk I peck out falls flat. Embarrassed, I look away.

I whine to a friend that I’ve tried everything and nothing’s working. He suggests I set my manuscript aside for the moment and write on a different subject to stir up the creative juices, get them flowing again. I think I’ll try that. I think I’ll write about my cat. Dr. Seuss did, and look how well that turned out.

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Drema Hall Berkheimer has published online in Persimmon Tree, Babel Fruit, Southern Women’s Review, and Muscadine Lines. She is writing a memoir, Running on a Red Dog Road, about growing up in West Virginia as the child of a Rosie the Riveter mother and a father who was killed in the coalmines. She has judged literary competitions and was selected to read at the 2009 Dallas City Arts Celebration. Two of her nonfiction pieces were winners in the 2010 C. C. Young Arts Competition. Literary affiliations include WV Writers, Salon Quatre, and The Writer’s Garret in Dallas, where she is completing an advanced writing program. She studied at Marshall University, Warren Business College, and other stops along the road.