Tuesday: Writing

I never believed in "writer's block" until it struck me like a hammer in the Fall of 2009. I had always believed it to be an excuse for lack of talent...that was, of course, until I found myself wandering vast expanses of intellectual Sahara. And I certainly don't lack talent (Right?).

If it weren't for the ease of the Delete key, my apartment would have been tucked to the brim with balled up pieces of paper, violently torn from notebooks and crumpled into submission. Perhaps the Delete key is too easy, maybe there is some satisfaction in physically killing a fetus about to sprout hideous birth defects. Why put that upon the world when our bookstores are full of paperbacks asking for change in dirty fast food cups? Maybe my kind should just quit reproducing, us writers selfishly birthing our little monsters because we want to "pass on our genetic material." Why do I think my stoned accidents should be the subject of the Great American Novel, why do I privilege my experience over the privileged experiences of everyone else? Ridiculous! I am about to toss this netbook across the room!

I couldn't keep my tenses straight, and my pieces began to read like sloppy exercises through How Not to Write. One time I said I was just too stoned to write, another time I said I was just too drunk to write, another time I said I was too hungover to write, another time I said I was too busy to write (That's a terrible terrible lie), and another time I said I was too tired to write (The worst perpetrator of Not-Getting-Anything-Done and a clear symptom of Approaching-Your-Mid-Twenties AKA Growing-Up). The truth was that I was too scared to write. I had been cranking out some pretty decent work and become victim of a common artists' ailment: Delusion.

What I mean is that sometimes you begin to believe that you're actually as good as you fantasize. I am not saying that you are not good, because you have to believe in any dream to make it come true. But you become obsessed with perfection and the obsession becomes paralyzing. We forget that part of learning is failing. And we forget that we can always learn something new.

So suffering as I was from the Paralyzing Pursuit of Perfection, the cursor would blink and blink and blink, an admonishing finger wag, until I'd eek out some lame phrases, wandering aimlessly through a tangle of half-baked (Or thoroughly baked, maybe even burned out) thoughts. I'd cease, my head dry, read it over, attempt to find the thread, and then realize that the entire sweater had come undone.

I had created all sorts of new hobbies to put off my nightly sentences, ranging from indulgent tea-brewing to utterly strange domesticity (Cooking! Baking! Cleaning!). Everyday in my planner I would write down, "DO SOME FUCKING WRITING," and everyday I'd circle it and draw an arrow to the next day, until the arrow crossed weeks and weeks of wasteland.

It was devastating and it was debilitating. A writer will tell you...it is an addiction. It's the highest high - when the words come tumbling out of you so fast that you cannot keep up - and it's the lowest low. It is amazing mind-blowing sex, and then it is an unresponsive prick.

One day I was fiending for a fix, shifting around my apartment, trawling sludgy waters for some limp catch, sucking hit after hit from my pipe until suddenly it dawned upon me:

Now I can finally cross this off my list.

Writing September 28 2009