Sometimes, after reading a really good book (or story) I get severely depressed. Of course I’ve thought a little about why, but I really threw that much brain power into it. Maybe I never really wanted to figure it out. But recently, during my stint in the private and personal level of hell known as Writer’s Block, it happens more often.

(Jaida might be interested to know that this has happened several times after reading something she wrote. Dani might be interested to know that it happened after things that she and Jaida have co-written. 4 out of the last 6 times I can remember this happening to me, it was after writing done by one or the both of them. Now, I’m not blaming them. I mean, the first condition for this particular type of depression setting in is that I have to really like the thing I just read.)

I just finished read Sarah Monette’s The Mirador. I truly adore this particular series of books. (As might be proven by the fact that I have taken a nickname of one of the characters as my online handle.) Upon finishing it, I realized that while I utterly adored the book, I was depressed that I had read it. Not that I had finished it, exactly, but because it was just. so. good. and–here’s the first point–I hadn’t written it, and–here’s the second point–I wasn’t possibly going to be able to write anything that good at any point in the future. So what I was really getting depressed over is the fact that the book exists.

(Some of this is my own insecurities. I realize this. I think it hits me harder when I haven’t written anything in a while and when it doesn’t look like the Writer’s Block is going to go away any time soon. Because not only am I not going to be able to write anything that good, I won’t be able to write, period.)

Taking a moment to think about this, it sounds pretty irrational to me. Or incomprehensible. But I’ve thought about this for a while now, and I think I have come to some sort of a conclusion.

Here’s what I’ve got: Jealousy. Plain and simply, really. I don’t not write because I don’t have any ideas. In fact, I have a lot of ideas filling up my brain. What I don’t have is the connection from brain to finger that would allow me to give those ideas a release. (Though, I’m not going to deny that part of the problem, a part that only sort of makes it worse, is laziness. Because writing is so hard for me right now, I don’t want to sit down and just do it. That’s where the laziness comes in.) Intellectually I know that I can write. I know that I can even–pardon the arrogance–write well.

I’m not entirely sure what the point I’m trying to make is, or if I’ve found a solution to whatever problem I was trying to find a solution to. There are less than two weeks before I go back to school. My only goal for this summer was to write, and I haven’t written a single thing. I have two weeks to fix this, if it’s even fixable.