Troubles in writer's land

I wrote this in a diary a few months ago and thought it adequately sums up what I'm feeling...


My favourite time at school was not recess, but when the teachers would utter those words "short story". Creative writing sparked a light in me and I could sit for the rest of the afternoon delving over a story. If one line particularly delighted me, I would read the whole story again just for the sheer pleasure of that sentence. I would try and place more in, some came naturally, some were more tortured. My second favourite activity was library time, when one afternoon a week we were allowed to change our books. Most of the time I had swapped them prior, indulged in them over night under the covers of my blanket. I took sanctuary in the feelings the books gave me. They were not literary masterpieces, but they washed me in their words, caressed me in their printed embrace. A blank paper was like my television, except instead of seeping creativity from my brain, it nurtured it.

When I started high school, my writing faltered, twittering out like a bird being silenced. I became obsessed with the petty politics of my circle, which went round and round and provided no ending. Occasionally we would be given creative writing tasks, but the feeling had changed. It was replaced with dread and laziness. No longer could I string beautiful sentences together so easily. Maybe children are the best writers, they care less about perfection and delight in the process. I abandoned writing for fun and saw it as a chore.

It is only now that I am picking it up again and my words have become burdens. They hinder me. They are the same over and over again; my sentences are so common and cliched. I'm trying to break out of it but it's taking longer than I thought. I want my fingers to fly over keyboards, think of metaphors that describe what I'm saying, that aren't just planted there like a red rose amongst yellow. The thing I am having trouble with is this: I can't distinguish good writing from bad. Ok, maybe I can. Maybe it is the fact I can't distinguish mediocre writing from the magnificent. How can you judge that? And how do you turn the tap on to make it flow? To foster the creativity I know could brim out of me?