Paradox

Here's one of my favorite pieces of writing advice. It's from William Stafford, an Oregon poet, who advised lowering your standards when encountering writer's block.

I seize up the moment I decide my writing needs to be good. It's a paradox. I can neither think that anyone will read what I'm writing (because then it should be good), nor can I write without thinking anyone will read it (because then what's the point?). I know, I know, I should write because I think it's "fun". Or because I enjoy it. Well, the fact is that I don't enjoy it. I just dislike NOT writing even more.

(photo of william stafford)

On and On

Still no writing. I'm busy entertaining my good friend who's visiting from Cape Cod. She's a major bookworm and brought a book for me to read called Seven Types of Ambiguity. She's just finishing her second reading of it,

Not sure why this dry spell is continuing.

Fiction Vs. Nonfiction

Lots of self-doubt these days.

My boyfriend just left with a friend to go see The Host, an excellent Korean horror flick about a mutant river monster who starts preying on humans. After they left I had an idea for a short story using his friend as a base for the main character. I have lots of story ideas based on real people, but I'm averse to writing them. Why? So many writers do. The example that first springs to mind is Thomas Wolfe, who based his book Look Homeward Angel (a must read) on himself and people from his hometown. The reaction was intense and he was pretty much ostracized from his hometown in North Carolina.

I guess I'm afraid of that reaction, that people would read those kinds of stories and say, "Hey, that's me! You b#@%h!" But so what? I am, actually, averse to writing fiction in the first place (kind of ironic, considering I'm trying to write a novel). But so often while reading and writing fiction I find myself thinking, "What's the point? This is just made up stuff happening to made up people. It has nothing to do with real life." At the same time, I often garner insights from reading good fiction, which I apply to my own life.

Take Nick Hornby's book How to Be Good, for example. I finished it last week and so much of it rang true for my own life. One of the main points of his book is that books and movies and plays take our mind off ourselves and our own lives and force us to see the world from a different perspective. I am often guilty of thinking that my view is the right one, as well as my opinions and thoughts and morals. Without exposing myself to different writers and thinkers I am in danger of pigeon-holing myself into my narrow view and becoming stodgy and stuck-in-my-ways.

I know that both fiction and nonfiction can make me think and see differently. I suppose I see nonfiction as having a leg up in this regard, because it's about stuff that did actually happen. So there's an incentive, if I am to write fiction, to base it on real life. Hell, I could USE real life and just change names and dates if I wanted.

In fact, the main character of the novel I'm slowly writing reminds me both of myself and an old, old friend from first grade who became a doctor. My main character is doing his residency and I often use stories my friend has told me for inspiration and authenticity.

I'm a songwriter as well, and most of my inspiration is toward that lately. I'm off to play my guitar!

(photo of annie dillard)

Dry

This is getting pathetic. Four days without posting. Haven't written in any of those. My self-doubt is in red alert right now...

I'm fantasizing about going to medical school and becoming a surgeon. I tell myself that the more I focus on BEING a writer, the more I dislike writing. I tell myself that it should just be a hobby, something I do on the side of a real job.

Finished Hornby's book. Man, was it great! It made me feel that I'll never be a truly great writer. On the other hand, I've started reading The Secret Life of Bees and I'm like, "Huh? This was a BESTSELLER? How?" It's not written all that well, and the author has a hard time keeping her voice out of it and so I feel pulled from the story a lot. In other words, she doesn't capture the voice of a young woman effectively.

Can I really be on the brink of abandoning my novel so close to the starting line? I'm dreaming up memoirs and short stories, documentary ideas and articles. Like I wrote before, my biggest challenge by far is sticking with a project to the end. Maybe I'm making this too boring! Maybe I need to write FUN stuff! Or, write stuff in a FUN way...

Why I Don't Write

Didn't write while backpacking. Didn't write today. That's five days in a row sans writing.

Why don't I write? This question is infinitely more difficult to answer. Fear? Laziness? I don't really want to? Failure to prioritize? These are all probable factors.

All I know is that when I fail to write after promising myself I would, I feel like a lazy, fearful, unmotivated, unorganized loser. Horrible, no? So this evening I'm drinking whiskey with coke and cleaning the house. My way of drowning that bad feeling away.

One thing I dislike about myself is this tendency I have to let my emotions rule. I have a crummy (crumby?) day, I feel lousy, and I let everything slide so I can sit around and feel bad. Or, the other end of it is when I get super excited and happy and I start making promises left and right, sure I can do everything I feel like in that moment.

Balance, Grasshopper.

Day 8

Got my thirty minutes in today, unlike yesterday. What happened yesterday? Well, I slept late and rushed to work without time to write. I got home and went out to a yoga class, thinking I'd write later, even though I had plans to go out later. I took a nap so I'd have energy when I went out later, slept longer than I meant to, woke up and had to rush...

I didn't prioritize my writing, so it got pushed aside. No good. Today could have been a similar story. I slept late, rushed to work, came home and plunked down into a nap to recover from staying up till 4 am, and woke up with a to do list the size of New Orleans banging around inside my head. BUT, unwilling to skip another day without writing, I sat down and did my 30 minutes and it was great.

Today I tried freewriting for 10 minutes beforehand, and I think it gave me more fodder for the 30 minutes that followed. I don't know that I'll always have time to do it, but it'd be nice! It's the weekend now. I won't pressure myself to write until Monday, when I'll be in the woods on a 3-day camping trip. And yes, I plan to write while I'm there! Stephen King says he writes almost every day of the year. If he can do that, I can stick to my five-day-a-week routine.

(photo of stephen king)