Contact Me

Email me
"Hard is not hopeless." - General David Petraeus



Friday, September 17, 2010

The Outside Looking In

We can all disagree about many things but if there is one universal emotional reaction, it's that we hate to be on the outside looking in.

That's exactly where I am right now. I feel like I'm trapped behind an impenetrable glass wall, staring straight out in front of me at my unreachable writer's life. I can see it, but I can't reach it. The file cabinet of ideas. The laptop waiting to burn the early morning oil with my hands on the keyboard as I tap out the next manuscript. The stacks of books on writing or motivating novels.

And my heart is staring up at my brain and my brain staring down at my heart like the opening credits of The Brady Bunch. They're not communicating with each other on writing---each blaming the other for the fact that the body they're in isn't writing.

Total writing paralysis.

It sucks.

I want it to be over.

I'm not getting any younger and I have a lot of ideas trapped in my mind. But right now they're not even clawing to try to come out. It's like they've been drugged---sedated.

I don't know how published authors deal with these phases. Oh yeah, sure. I can hear it now. "You just power through and write anyway," someone will bluster. Sure. But its never quite that easy. Writing, after all, isn't the same mental process as manufacturing a widgit. You might need to be creative to draw up the design for the widgit, but its not needed for production. Not so with writing..

There's a lot at war within me right now and most of my energies are diverted to simple survival. But I hope one day soon I'll get to transform from survival mode to living mode.

1 comment: