History & Wine

I’m actually laughing to myself as I start this post. When I wrote the title and then walked away to peruse my several home wine racks for something to drink while writing, I made the joke in my head, “obviously Zinfandel, silly!”

But when I grabbed a red blend out of the rack that is, in fact, dominated by Zinfandel, it was no longer a joke. Perhaps, Zinfandel is the cure to writer’s stall. You are welcome.

What is writer’s stall?

No, not writer’s block (that’s what I’m dealing with currently with regards to my monthly published wine column). Writer’s stall is something more serious. It’s a more settled…well… stalled, feeling. Something that happens when a writer stops writing for fun and becomes too worried about where the next paycheck is coming from. It’s the feeling when writing becomes mundane and not exciting. The moment when a writer stops writing due to lack of motivation, executive disfunction, or most likely, imposter syndrome.

It’s much worse than writer’s block, which we all have to get over before a deadline. Writer’s stall kills spirits.

2012…

When I started this blog in October of 2012, I was full of excitement for what I could write. Really, the possibilities were endless. It was my new project, and I was bursting with creative ideas.

I started writing about wine…and history! I interviewed authors, read books, and reviewed them here. There was one point shortly after I started the blog that I was writing posts on a daily basis. I talked about coffee, restaurants, family, you name it. There was usually a wine tie-in, but stories are history, and I had a lot of them to tell.

Occasionally after work, I would also take creative writing lessons with an author in D.C. Her book still haunts me (in a good way), and I would implore you to discover it yourself sometime. I will always be grateful for the time that Mary Tabor spent encouraging me through personal writing meetings in museum cafes around our nation’s capital. What a cool era in my life.

Where did all that excitement for pure writing for writing’s sake go? I miss the days of not worrying about editors and pitches and chasing down freelance checks. Maybe, the cure for writer’s stall is simply to start writing like no one is reading again. Is anyone reading?

2023…

I can’t say it’s all bad. This blog, in its heyday, won awards on WordPress and was acknowledged by the burgeoning D.C. blog “media” corps. Eventually, it led to a wine column in a magazine in Coral Gables, FL called “Let’s Eat.” Which turned into an introduction to the editor at Biscayne Times, who was looking for a new wine columnist in 2017.

This blog was the beginning of a career I could have never even imagined when I typed out that first post (probably drunk on Trader Joe’s Three Buck Chuck) in my little Arlington apartment.

So, why did I abandon it?

To focus on my professionalism??

That’s like how I spent my 20s desperate to be a “professional” in a corner office, just to become some freelance wine writer in my 30s. Thank GOD for this little blog that, in a way, saved me from a life I now realize would have never been for me.

So, is the Zin working? (You’re absolutely thinking that if you’re still reading by this point.)

I’m not sure, frankly. The wine is a big fat OK, so I won’t bother mentioning it. The alcohol is listed at 14.5, so I’m sure it’s pushing 16. Ask me after another glass. Or better yet, subscribe to my blog at the bottom of this page to see if I ever write anything else.