More on Writing
Sep. 26th, 2004 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
falcongrrlWe had a wonderful, truly wonderful, vacation first in Georgia and then in North Carolina. I intended to write all about that, but managed to procrastinate enough so that the idea isn't even palatable anymore. Maybe I'll get back to it eventually. Maybe. The truth is that I haven't been writing at all. I don't think it's writer's block so much as avoidance, but I'll be damned if I know why I'm avoiding it. I love writing, but I guess I don't always like those moments of hanging suspension, wondering if words--the right ones--will come. It's slightly scary. So...instead I eat, and read, and chat online, and take care of my kids, and do whatever else it is I do.
I had a truly great online conversation with S. last week (the first in a long while) and he tried to kick my ass sufficiently to get me off it and publishing. But something is still holding me back. S.'s confidence in me means something; his praise feels genuine and not just empty flattery (although I want to believe him, so perhaps my interpretation of his words is suspect.) At any rate his advice is appreciated; so why don't I take it? I don't know. I think it's because I still feel this weird sense of inertia.
I can write anything; I can try to publish anything, but what should I pitch and sell? And perhaps that's what I have this weird aversion to...the idea of selling myself. It seems sleazy somehow, not as noble as the real work of hammering out words. And yet I'd promote a friend in a heartbeat, promote any writer who I thought was talented...so why not me? In the end, does it come down to believing (or not believing) that I'm worth it? I don't know.
Writing's what I turn to when the darkness threatens to come. Right now the winds are swirling around outside; the sky's gray; my head is pounding, whether from fluctuations in barometric pressure or allergies or my skewed glasses or other unknown factors, I can't say. But my head hurts, has been hurting for days now. I wish I could get D to rub my head, neck, and shoulders, the way he did if I had a migraine when we first were dating. He'd make those little circles around my temples and down the sides of my face with his fingers. Thinking about it makes me yearn for it again.
Instead I pop three Advil and keep going. When they wear off it hurts and then the cycle repeats all over again.
My son is whining about going outside. I'm in a bitchy enough mood to actually consider letting him, wondering what the neighbors will think about a naked five-year-old flying past the window like a piece of fence or lawn furniture. Okay, I would never actually do that. But I am annoyed. The wind dies down (and his clamoring becomes more insistent) and then whips back up again. We're in a fucking hurricane, and half of my household is sleeping and the other half is whining. I'm including myself in the whining group. And I'm writing just to make it bearable.
That's why I write. I write in order to be able to withstand life, to infuse it with something beyond the ordinary, to give it meaning.
Sometimes it actually works.
My son said earlier, "Look, Mommy, the hurricane is angry. Look at the trees bend." Instead I painted a verbal wordpicture for him of the storm who blows because it's fun, who bends trees because it can, in complete capricious whimsy, in elation. Sometimes the howling does seem to me to be cries of joy.
The reality is that even the slight taps of my fingers against the keyboard are annoying my tempermental head. The reality is that I'm resentful at D for sleeping, though I can't clearly articulate why. The reality is that this whole entry is woefully self-indulgent.
But I'm glad I've written this, written something, even if it's just drivel...because it's what I know how to do. Because it's what I love and fear.
A+
I had a truly great online conversation with S. last week (the first in a long while) and he tried to kick my ass sufficiently to get me off it and publishing. But something is still holding me back. S.'s confidence in me means something; his praise feels genuine and not just empty flattery (although I want to believe him, so perhaps my interpretation of his words is suspect.) At any rate his advice is appreciated; so why don't I take it? I don't know. I think it's because I still feel this weird sense of inertia.
I can write anything; I can try to publish anything, but what should I pitch and sell? And perhaps that's what I have this weird aversion to...the idea of selling myself. It seems sleazy somehow, not as noble as the real work of hammering out words. And yet I'd promote a friend in a heartbeat, promote any writer who I thought was talented...so why not me? In the end, does it come down to believing (or not believing) that I'm worth it? I don't know.
Writing's what I turn to when the darkness threatens to come. Right now the winds are swirling around outside; the sky's gray; my head is pounding, whether from fluctuations in barometric pressure or allergies or my skewed glasses or other unknown factors, I can't say. But my head hurts, has been hurting for days now. I wish I could get D to rub my head, neck, and shoulders, the way he did if I had a migraine when we first were dating. He'd make those little circles around my temples and down the sides of my face with his fingers. Thinking about it makes me yearn for it again.
Instead I pop three Advil and keep going. When they wear off it hurts and then the cycle repeats all over again.
My son is whining about going outside. I'm in a bitchy enough mood to actually consider letting him, wondering what the neighbors will think about a naked five-year-old flying past the window like a piece of fence or lawn furniture. Okay, I would never actually do that. But I am annoyed. The wind dies down (and his clamoring becomes more insistent) and then whips back up again. We're in a fucking hurricane, and half of my household is sleeping and the other half is whining. I'm including myself in the whining group. And I'm writing just to make it bearable.
That's why I write. I write in order to be able to withstand life, to infuse it with something beyond the ordinary, to give it meaning.
Sometimes it actually works.
My son said earlier, "Look, Mommy, the hurricane is angry. Look at the trees bend." Instead I painted a verbal wordpicture for him of the storm who blows because it's fun, who bends trees because it can, in complete capricious whimsy, in elation. Sometimes the howling does seem to me to be cries of joy.
The reality is that even the slight taps of my fingers against the keyboard are annoying my tempermental head. The reality is that I'm resentful at D for sleeping, though I can't clearly articulate why. The reality is that this whole entry is woefully self-indulgent.
But I'm glad I've written this, written something, even if it's just drivel...because it's what I know how to do. Because it's what I love and fear.
A+
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-26 02:08 pm (UTC)