Something Unfortunately True

The truth is, I haven't been writing. For the last week I have felt completely paralyzed every time I open up a text editor, and I haven't been able to create anything worth sharing.

It shocks me, still, how much it hurts when I can't write.

Okay, okay. I shouldn't say can't. Because I can, and I will if I make myself. But that doesn't mean it feels good, that doesn't mean it feeds my soul. Sometimes it's just hard work that I have to get through, work that I even end up resenting in the end because I am left with these thoughts, always these thoughts of

this isn't good enough.

NaNoWriMo is coming up soon. I am getting psyched up for it, getting ready to get my novel on. I still have no idea what I am going to write this year, which is nothing new. I usually go into NaNoWriMo with just a faint flicker of an idea and a whole lot of hope and nothing more.

Turns out you can survive on hope. This last week, not writing, I've been hoping to get my groove back. I've been hoping that the day will come when I'll open up a new file in Scrivener and be inspired to start writing something new.

I hope it will happen soon, and even if it doesn't I'll be hiding behind this computer screen, typing a whole bunch of trite, useless blog posts that will never get published about how I can't write the way I wish I could.

But that's okay, you know. Even when it sucks, it still passes the time.

---

I am linking up with my homies at Studio 30+ with the prompt "hurt" and for the first time with Five Minute Friday with the prompt "true."

 

Seriously, just go sit down.

Get your butt in the chair.
Seriously, just go sit down.

Open up your laptop to a new
Scrivener file, and of course
choose "novel with parts"
because we're being hopeful here, and
you're going to learn
to have some faith in yourself.

Just show up and do the work.
Your muse is a myth, he's a figment,
he's an empty promise.

No more of this trite,
pedantic crap.
No more of this:
I can't, I can't, I can't.

Get your butt in the chair
and your hands on the keyboard.

Seriously, just go sit down.

I wrote this for week seventy-eight of the Trifecta Writing Challenge. The word to use was:

PEDANTIC (adjective)

1 : of, relating to, or being a pedant(see pedant)

2 : narrowly, stodgily, and often ostentatiously learned

3 : unimaginative, pedestrian

---

I have been having an unbelievably hard time writing lately, and this silly little poem doesn't even begin to describe how bad of a problem this is for me. Lame duck sauce.

After Midnight Musings

When I went on vacation last month something happened that I really didn't expect: I just stopped writing.

I had been writing on 750words.com for over 100 days in a row, and when I went to Arizona I missed a day and so I just stopped. When I started blogging in January with the intention of keeping that up every day for a year, I got to 91 days and then stopped.

I don't have much of a follow through with anything in my life. Sometimes I think the only thing in my life I can say for certain I've not given up on is Elise, my daughter. I'm still a mom. That's gone on for over seven years now and of course I don't have any intentions on quitting being her parent, but sheesh, I wonder to myself. My track record for follow through and finishing things is quite poor.

+++

I have been struggling lately. I struggle when I don't write.

For me, struggling is seething alone in my house in front of a computer screen, telling myself how useless I am and how hopeless my life is because I'm never going to be able to make my own dreams come true.

It's gross and it's ugly and sad and pathetic and embarrassing, but I am willing to bet that some of you know exactly what I am talking about.

+++

Tomorrow this cool dude named R.J. Torbert is coming to the bookshop to do a reading and signing event. I don't know if I am going to be able to go yet. If I do, I will probably have to get a babysitter, or else just try to get there early and leave quietly through the back if Elise starts making some sort of scene.

Elise's behavior has been strange lately. She has her normal social issues going on at school, but she is really talking back to me more often now than she ever has before, and her language is getting quite colorful. Sometimes I forget I am talking to a seven year old and not a seventeen year old. I want to go to the event but I don't want to cause a disruption if Elise cannot hold down quiet book-event time behavior.

Anyway, thinking about him coming to the event tomorrow night made me think about the Ghost Face mask, and the Scream franchise in general, and I thought to myself, hmm... hmm...

And then I started writing tonight. Not much, nothing to write home about (har de har har). 370 words, ripped out after midnight, because I had to. I had to. The words "writer's block" were starting to creep into the back of my mind and I had to get them out! I had to prove myself wrong and I did, so good. That is a really good way to end the day.