Soundtrack is Now Working Again

Check out the "Go To Hell" post with the music :)

Dr. Weezie Tagged Me

Read THIS first. I’ll play along out of a sense of duty, but I’m not tagging anyone else so there.

1. When I am late, I gradually lose my ability to logically and mathematically reason a course of action. If, for example, I miss my bus, I reason that I can catch the next one, or get a cab. And then I think, I can combine the two, get the bus to a certain point and then get a cab, to save money. But I have to get money first, and then I have to walk 15 minutes to catch the bus, and the bus leaves in 13 minutes, but somehow, I think I might be able to make it and still save money, so I walk, sometimes run, not entirely sure of how it will all fit together, but somehow convinced that my moving will bring me closer to getting to work on time.

2. I keep things that I will never use and don't really like because I think it might have value to someone somewhere. Lots of times I try to figure out a way to sell these items, but not always. I'm also happy giving things away to people who will also value them. I just find it very VERY hard to throw things out. It might have a use, value, something that I hadn't considered. And worse, if it's something like underwear, I have to replace it!!!

3. I continually pretend to swing an imaginary baseball bat, or pitch and imaginary ball when I am waiting for something. I do this in malls, at work, in someone's living room, anywhere really. I do different players, trying to figure out how their swing/wind up works. My favourites: Ichiro, Hideo Nomo, Dontrell Willis and Freddy Garcia.

4. I can't just watch a TV show on my own anymore. I have to be doing something else. I usually watch stuff on my computer, so I'm chatting, scowering ebay, reading about the latest baseball trade/free agent rumours, all while a television show that I love is playing in one corner of the screen. I don't have the attention span anymore. I try, I do. I maximize the show so it covers the whole screen, and then I squirm and shift, I think of something else I should do, and keep squirming until finally I can't handle it and go do whatever it is I thought of. That usually takes 10 minutes or less, if I'm not eating or sorting through papers or something.

5. If I can't sleep, I imagine one of two story lines in my head. One is like a scene from Alien, where the team is creeping through a big, dark tunnel, looking for the Alien. Each one is carrying a machine gun (I am one of the team) and the only sound is the slow, constant drip of water. The other is like a scene from Thin Red Line. A team of WWII soldiers is creeping it's way across a field of tall grass. They are couched or crawling. It's a sunny day and the only sound is of birds singing and crunch of ground beneath the soldiers. I'm usually asleep before any action happens.

Heal (Exercise #1)

Pick a word that has strong significance to you or your characters. Start by copying the word and quickly, without stopping for any reason, continue writing until you reach the end of the page. Making sense is unimportant. Your goals are speed and endurance. If you get stuck, repeat whatever word you've just selected until something new spills out.

This exercise turned out a little more angst ridden and drmatic than I expected, but rather than edit that out and add humour and cynicism, I decided to leave it as is, to give you a raw look at what came of the exercise.

Heal the broken, the sliced, the thin cut that is just relaxing around the edges enough to for a little blood to escape. Heal the shock that comes with the initial slice, the fear that follows, the warmth after that. Heal the feeling of dizziness, the feeling that the world has turned sideways. Heal the place where you stick your hand out to brace your fall, the place where your elbow that crashes down. Heal your eyes falling back in your head, the vomit that spurts out of your mouth and lies stinking beneath your nose and soaks into your hair and your shirt. Heal the shaking, the convulsing. Heal the clarity at the end. The sense of understanding. Heal the feeling of your head splitting in two so you can make room for what you see, what you understand. Heal the feeling of being lost in the light that you see.

Heal my pacing. My obsessing. My frantic fear of nothing, my need to link it to something. Heal my anger at feeling this way, out of control, sad over nothing, or worse than nothing, a fucking TV program or some fucking thing someone says. Heal my frustration. Heal my inability to move beyond the stupidest things. Heal me.

And once I am healed, once you have healed me, I will testify to the world, share my story with the world who also needs your healing. I will tell them, careful not to tell them what they need, or how to seek healing. For how did I seek your healing? How did I find my way out of this? What did I do that you might heal me? I don’t even know yet, for I still suffer, and in my suffering, I know, I remember that your healings are not the same. My healing would not be the same as yours. That’s what I will say. “You too can be healed, I do not know how, or why, or what you must do. I do not know how to find that out. I do not know that hope is important. I do not know this knowledge, that healing is possible, that it might be waiting for you, is even helpful. I do not even know your healing is out there, or in here, or whatever. I only know that I am healed.”

And of course, I won’t know that. I won’t know, truly, that my healing is complete, will I? This is not a true healing. It is an in-between healing, a quasi-healing. I am healed of a feeling, and emotion. Which I do not want to be healed of. Which I want, which I crave, which I desire. I want to feel unsatisfied with my life as it is because I do not want to stay as I am. This pain, this fear, this self-torture moves me on. It moves me. I am moved by it.

Heal my severe wounds, the ones that cripple me, but leave me to suffer with the small ones. Leave me a struggle. Leave me my dissatisfaction, only temper it with satisfaction. Let me feel the contradiction in my bones. Let me feel both at once, tugging at each other. Let them both tug at my heart and my lungs and my mind and my penis.

Let me heal. Let me be your healer. Let me walk through the streets and be blessed with your sight, your vision. Let me see the wounds around me, the gapping sores that they are unable to cover, nurse, treat. And give me the knowledge to help them, the ability to walk over and give them the difficult surgery they need by touching their head, their chin, their lips. With these tingling hands, let me push out the wounds, the fear, or at least push it back so that it is only a lining for what goes in afterwards. Let me heal.

Just write a Page a Day

I made the mistake one day of telling a co-worker about my writing related anxiety.

Let me explain that first. Writing is hard. The actual writing is only half the problem. When you sit down to write, you have to face all sorts of self-doubts about yourself as a writer (maybe I’m not, maybe I’m not good enough to be a writer, etc.). If somehow you push beyond this and start writing, you deal with a whole new set of problems (how is this going to fit in with the rest of my novel? That sentence was really good what if the next one doesn’t live up to it? Is this character too one dimensional) and sometimes, even worse (Do I think like that? Am I like that? If people are like that to each other, how the fuck can we ever be intimate with each other?). And when I’m done, even if I get a significant amount done, it’s always worry about the amount (If I keep writing at this pace I will never get my novel done. All I need to do is sit down and write, and I can’t even do fucking that. I work part time, and don’t go out much, why the fuck can’t I write more than that? What is wrong with me? It’s so close, all I have to do is sit down and plug away, and I can’t do that. Jesus!)

As you can imagine, there is often overlap, and often, all of those feelings/thoughts are mixed together all at the same time and feed each other. If I’m not careful, they spin together and I get myself extremely worked up.

I can’t remember why I was like that at work. Maybe I spent my supper hour trying to write, or worse, planned to spend my supper hour writing and ended up looking at ebay instead.

In any case, I said something when I came back on the desk. My co-worker Goofy is a fucking middle-aged yuppie Unitarian who has bought into some crap businessy way of looking at problems and solutions and cites this “co-operative learning” consulting group he is a part of as his source for his ideas. He said. “All you need to do is sit down and write a page a day, and then at least you’ll be 365 pages further ahead at the end of the year.”

First, let me explain why that is complete bullshit.

When you are writing a short story or novel, you write things in drafts. The first draft, while hard, is the easiest draft to write. Afetr that, you are changing things and you suddenly feel this huge weight of everything you already have. Anything new has to fit in somehow. Writing a one new page just isn’t an option. More often, you sift through several pages, changing a few things here and there, changing the tense or the POV, adding a character, or taking out a description. A new page isn’t always going to help.

Furthermore, this can actually be detrimental to your writing in the long run. Everything I’ve read about writer’s anxiety suggests that A) you need to take frequent and long breaks from writing projects B) Only work on the project when you have something to write and C) when you are working (especially on a first draft) stop just before you run out of things to write, in the middle of a sentence even (that way you have a place to pick up at later). Lots of other helpful suggestions about making time and room to write, and scheduling and all that, but I won’t go into that now.

So I tried to shrug him off. Offered what I knew were impotent excuses about time, about how writing doesn’t work like that, but he kept pushing and pushing. Finally he said “You know what your problem is? You think you know better than everyone else, and you’re unwilling to consider anyone else’s opinion.”

Funny, but when you are fighting off anxiety, someone telling you what your problem is doesn’t seem helpful. I don’t remember how the conversation ended, but it did.

While I do need help managing my writing time and anxiety, Goofy’s advice didn’t help. I think he had good intentions, but he didn’t help. And knowing he wanted to help didn’t help either.

I don’t talk to Goofy about my writing anymore. If it comes up at all, I tend to give one word answers and change the subject.]

The worst thing about it is that I know I do similar things. Pooh is the best example because she is trying to figure out how to handle other people’s unwanted advice, including mine. In the past, I have forced my advice on her and become frustrated when she doesn’t listen, because I think I know better, or at leas that she should address the problems I raise. To me. Then.

On the other side, I remember Huckeleberry Hound and the way he used to give advice like he was perpetually in a therapy group. “May I comment on that? May I make an observation? May I share something?” FUCK I wanted to punch him in the head every time he opened his Goddman mouth! My favourite was the few times he lost his temper and the therapy language disappeared. He didn’t punch holes in the wall or become too insulting or anything, but it was good to see the layer of pop-therapy-bullshit dropped.

Anyway, there has to be a compromise, a middle ground where people can give each other helpful ideas and support without being overbearing or sounding like a sedated talking doll. I haven’t found it (still on the overbearing side) and I find myself forced to temper my annoyance and frustration because other people around me haven’t found it either.

In the meantime, I, um, er, am going to try to write more often. Maybe, even, um, a page every weekday.

I’ve got this book. Room To Write. Little writing assignments. Going to do more of those with the hopes it will make regular writing easier. Look for those to show up beginning tomorrow.