Writer’s Hell
>Writing can shove anchors down your “lazy-spine”. Lazy may be unkind, but what else do you call it when you simply don’t pull up your desk chair and write? Is there any other descriptive?
The reason most people do not write quickly becomes a scenario of intrusive tasks like taking out the garbage and repairing that window that’s been busted for the past three years. Marriages improve and relationships blossom. Spouses and significant others revel in your new career because all the sudden you spend more quality time with them.
Then the dark clouds form over your eyes, and a crazed gleam gets caught flashing out at the world and you’ve transcended from marital or relationship bliss into Writer’s Hell. That place where you know you need to write – in fact you MUST write – and you’ve created a daily routine that brims with duties and obligations that quarantine you from any appreciable writing time. That’s Writing Hell.
Writing Hell then becomes a series of critical comments from significant others who do not understand that the next 2 to 14 hours get your mind body and soul with no time for food, kisses or even the neanderthal grunt. Deadlines loom and pressure builds as brain cells and synapses fire off like a 4th of July extravaganza. You perspire and fear for the circuitry in your keyboard and your mouse slips from your sweaty fingers.
Most of all you find your brain contains nothing intelligent except old algebraic formulas from 10th grade. Irritability sets in as significant others (including children, pets and small flying insects) attempt to distract your last remaining grip on ‘the muse’. A pencil dropped in another room sends your ass skyward and your slippery hands to the doorknob. A fly buzzes your head like a low-flying jet and defensive maneuvers cause you to miss the doorknob. Your nose attempts to french the wood door and gets no love in return. Fury sends you into a Fred Flintstone beating of the door as you scream out the names of your loved ones in the hopes of detecting the location of the offending pencil dropper.
Suddenly the door opens causing you to levitate backwards for a moment with surreal images of books and chairs and computer screen glows panning across the scene before everything accelerates into the pain of the spike of a callously kicked off high heel impales a kidney and the cry of a mortally wounded soldier escapes your lips despite your urgency to appear sane and be able to avoid a Baker Act.
As they help you up from the floor your eyes glisten with the moisture of inspiration. Your nerves tingle and goosebumps decorate your arms like tiny armadas sailing off to war and your spirit soars as you shoo your rescuers out the door in the interest of genius about to be unleashed on the electrons staring at you expectantly from your monitor.
Ah yes, it’s the writer’s life for me! And Writer’s Hell? A figment of your imagination like its cousin – Writer’s Block. This day stands tall for this writer and the multitudes that will revel in his creation…
He’s Baaaaack!!!!!!!!!!
>It’s time to get back in the saddle – to fire up the keyboard and head on into Writing Town! Clever little beasties thwarted my writing the past couple months – obligations real and imagined, emergencies the same, and a general lack of self confidence.
I hope I’m not the only writer out here that suffers debilitating bouts of questioning abilities, direction and goals. If so, I may be doomed to die an obscure writing death. If that be so, then bring it on. I can handle it simply because I have to. Writing is not just a hobby, vocation, or passion. Writing becomes obsession at some point. I fail to recognize a good reason to fight this insanity. In fact, I ache to embrace it. So bring on the crazy, frantic – “I don’t know where my next dollar is coming from” way of life.
I’m returning to my fiction story here as well. I like the story even if none of you ever read it. I want to even cartoonize the daggone thing if I can figure out how to do it. I know, I know – it’s called “graphic novel”. They’re still comic books to me…
Look for more consistent posts from here on out. My discipline level must pick up or I’m dead meat. Let me know if you read this. Don’t leave me hanging, thinking the only thing that sees these words are the electrons on which they’re inscribed.
See? This post was worth reading just for that last sentence…
Nanowrimo Comes to a Close
>I posted to the Rogues Gallery Writers blog at the beginning of the month about Nanowrimo. Today is the last day of this crazy, inovational contest that challenges writers to pound out a full manuscript in thirty days. At the time of this writing, my personal word count is in doubt. Will I make the 50,000 words required to complete a successful Nano run?
There are a few hundred thousand who will complete the contest. My hat is off to anyone who even stepped up and attempted this writing gauntlet. You have to have writing guts. You have to have desire. You have to have a personality that thrives on perseverance. Then you have to make it happen.
I have successfully completed this task once. I would like to think as I key this that I have done it again. The feeling of writing invincibility is tremendous. The feeling of “I can write a book in thirty days euphoria” overwhelms you. Completing a successful Nanowrimo novel is the equivalent of winning an Olympic 100 meter dash.
You are wasted. Exhausted. Anxious to do it again while you kick back and bask in the glory of achievement. The largest difference between completing Nanowrimo and the Olympics though, is that few if any will see your accomplishment. But isn’t that the way of the writer?
Sure, we all desire notoriety and popularity in the book sales department, but few of us crave the physical limelight of being placed before the masses visually.
Nanowrimo has come to its 2009 end. A sad day, yet one of grand euphoria for those who cross that finish line. Another wonderful aspect of this contest is that there are a few hundred thousand winners. Unlike the Olympics where only one can be on top, here a multitude can feel the glow that comes from attaining a monumental task.
For those who did not enter, know this: When you see we Nano’s out there cranking out product while you struggle for a meager word count, don’t look at us with contempt. Know that we were once there with you – we simply found an answer and ran with it. You can do the same.
You don’t even have to wait for November. There’s a new month ahead of you and a whole set of new ones on the horizon. Compete in your own private Nanowrimo. No one has to know, but I warn you – when your word count begins to soar, others will notice the pimp in your writer’s step. They’ll ask what your secret is.
It’s up to you whether you tell them or not.
Write on!
The Cold Bite of Autumn (pt. 10)
>Daniel carried her into the cabin. Frost would surely cover the world in the morning. The pale sky was giving way to darkness. He sat her on the couch, went back to the car and fished out their minimal belongings – three bags of groceries and one bag of clothes. “I’ll get us better clothes tomorrow.”
“Hell, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.” Samantha laid down on the couch and propped her bad ankle up on the cushioned arm. “I think I’m going to like having a man wait on me hand and foot.”
Daniel grunted, strolled to the kitchen and began to unpack their food. “Mac and cheese ok for tonight?”
“Oh my god, a gourmet in the making. I’m not cooking so I suppose it will have to do.”
“What are the odds they are onto us already?”
“Took you a while to get there. You should have asked that before we left the hospital. We’re both as good as dead right now.”
“So what are they waiting for? If they know who I am, where we are and what we know, where’s the holdup?”
“They may be waiting to see if you get anywhere with me.”
“Isn’t that a long shot?”
“With what I know, they’ll gamble for the info.”
“Why don’t you just give it to them? What makes them want to kill you?”
Samantha rolled onto her side. She stared at the oak floor and said, “I turned.”
“You turned? How long?”
“Months. They had me as a target. We were almost there. The first of the money had already come in when I killed one of their assassins. I didn’t care. One more job and we were to be paid in full.”
“So these three guys meant a lot to you.”
“Only the world.”
Fiction's Footsteps 