I have been on a writing hiatus. I really don’t know why except the heat. The heat absolutely wipes me out, both mentally and physically. And I don’t even work in the heat. But it sounds like a really good excuse. It certainly sounds better than I’ve just been fighting the blahs. The blahs are when I just feel like nothing is really wrong but nothing is really right, either. Today, for example, I woke up at 4am and started reorganizing around the house. I couldn’t sleep although I really wanted to but in all fairness, I’d been asleep since about 8pm last night. It was TIME to get up and do something. I put away some supplies that I’d ordered from Costco a week or so ago. They’d been sitting in their shipping boxes in the middle of my dining room floor. The blahs told me to leave them there, as if one day they’d just put their own selves away.
I have an idea for a book in my head. If I start it, this will be about the fifth one I’ve started and got about half way through, then developed a severe disinterest. (AKA, the blahs.) I recently started thinking about the kind of writer that I wanted to become. I like writing romance but it just gets to a point where it starts to resemble some cheesy made for TV rom com. Ewww. I don’t want that. Then, sometimes it takes on a more risque flair and I wonder how many friends I would lose when THAT gets published. I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. Not terribly long ago I wrote a blog post about how reading helps to feed my creativity. Reading has also sparked the desire to be a Pulitzer Prize winning type of writer.
The blahs tell me that maybe I’m not smart enough to pull a story together with such crafting that it would be award winning. Past experience tells me I might get about half way through and throw it into the abandoned pile. But, the desire to do something with this wildly creative brain is growing so strong. I guess reading other books has really got me thinking about how my talent isn’t as absent as I may try to convince myself. When I read some of these books, I think about how I could do just as good, if not better, if only I could shake the blahs.
So, here goes. I bought myself a lap desk so that I can not use the excuse that I don’t want to sit at the desk typing after being at work all day. I can prop my feet up in the recliner and write until my heart is content. I’m going to change the font size on my screen so I can’t use an excuse about my vision being bad.
I really starting thinking about all the people who have seen things I’ve written and who have been very complimentary. Sometimes it’s hard to see the good in ourselves . Even when others see the good within us, it’s easy to doubt it rather than embrace it. Or, perhaps it is easier to doubt it because if we embrace it then we accept the higher calling. We accept the reality that we are not, as we may have once perceived, settling for what is easy to obtain. With the higher calling comes greater accountability and greater responsibility. Perhaps, as in maybe my case, we don’t want all of the extra work that will surely come when we accept that higher calling.
Lazy? Maybe. But I think a large part of it is waning inspiration. It comes and goes. Most of the above paragraph came to me several weeks ago. I wrote it out, not knowing exactly where I would put it or how I would use it. It was a moment of inspiration. As fast as it came, it left and I was then distracted by the demands of the day. Or, as I’ve been distracted while writing this post, by the diminishing stock of the famous Home Depot 12-foot skeleton for Halloween. In the span of time between when I started this paragraph and now, I’ve already put it in my shopping cart and made a post on Facebook asking my friends to talk me out of purchasing it. This is why writing an eighty thousand or so word novel is a bit of a challenge for me.
Heaven forbid something challenging or emotional happens. I will be on the writing off-ramp so fast it will look like some spacecraft from Star Wars whizzing by. Let me get a little stressed out and I may as well be in the corner balled up in the fetal position. I don’t want to write until I want to write. And that is not how you become a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. That’s how you remain stagnant and a washed up wannabe.
I need an accountability partner. Not the kind that whips me with palm fronds when I’ve fallen off the writing wagon. I need someone who can read my work and give me thoughtful insight. I need someone who will challenge me when I’m on the cusp of a breakthrough. Perhaps someone who can recognize the blahs coming on and remind me of the kind of writer I am, and more importantly the writer they know is within. Accountability partners are hard to find. Especially when it comes to having someone read and re-read pages of ever-evolving words. I definitely need the accountability partner more than I need the 12-foot skeleton. If you’re reading this and you’re thinking that you would love to read and critique the work of a future Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, now is your chance. Comment on this post for details!
This MAY or MAY NOT be me daydreaming again….
Messpot Diaries 