Writer's Block?

Early last week I had made a resolution to myself to write a thousand words a day.  I had been getting pretty lax in terms of writing activity and I had wanted to make some kind of commitment to get myself going again.  And for about six days, I did it!  I got a lot of writing done, and finished off two chapters of the thing I am working on now. 

And then I started trying to write the next chapter, and I just had nothing.  It wasn't that I wasn't feeling like writing.  Far from it!  In fact, I was sitting down every night, but one, for hours, and trying to figure out what to write next.  But nothing was coming.  I ended up spending all that time doing research to what I wanted to eventually write.  I suppose I could have knocked out some words on the two or so short stories I have in the mix, but I just didn't feel like it.  I had felt all this momentum building up in the days before on the main thing, and working on something else would have felt like putting that on the back burner.  Besides, those things had stalled too; shifting focus to those would have meant still banging my head against a wall, it would just be a different wall. 

I wonder, then, if this is writer's block, or at least a version of it.  It's not that I don't want to write, or that I am being lazy.  It is just that the ideas are not yet there for what I want to do, what feels right when I put it on the page.  It's like I have to wait for my subconscious to catch up to what I want to work on.  Its annoying, because honestly I would rather be typing.  When I do enough typing, I find that I actually like it, the sensation of your self melting away and becoming merely the flow of words and sentence structures building themselves invisibly inside the cavern of the mind as your hands glide intuitively over the keyboard.  I want to get back to that.  Why can't I? 

Hurry up, brain!

It is hard as hell to get back into writing something after setting it aside for a long time.

Ahem.

Ok, so.  It has been a long time since I have been doing any writing with any kind of regularity, and as is often the case the long absence has been gnawing at over this time until nublike I am first to set fingers to keyboard and start pouring out ideas into the silent void of pixelated code, some attempt and literary communication to scratch that itch, that insistent drumbeat telling me to create verbally that for some forsaken reason I always end up deigning to slough off like a weight on my back or walk off like a cramp in my leg.  For some reason the protracted activity of sitting and thinking and typing and writing and putting thoughts into sentences and building them into paragraphs is something that invariably ends up bugging me.  Maybe my chair isn't comfortable enough or maybe I just can't sit still or maybe I am just lazy and undriven.  I can't think of anyway to trick my mind into doing it on a more regular basis.  I seem to be stuck in this cycle of typing typing typing for a week or two and then getting tired of it and going off and doing something like watching television or maybe reading a book, or just fucking around on the internet surfing tumblrs for hours and hours and hours or refreshing the same criticism websites over and over and over hoping that finally this time this one will have some new content for me to lie back and read on my laptop and then I will have that to do instead of writing and yet each and every time all the time that I am doing all of that I am thinking, you should be writing, you should be doing something constructive, this is not constructive, this is not getting you where you want to go in your life.  You don't get points for idling.  Even now a part of me, having written all this in one sitting is want to get, up walk around, pace for pacing's sake, maybe open up the firefox browser in the lower left hand corner and see, in one of those websites, any one of them, has maybe update one little thing, one new photo that they are reblogging from somewhere else on the internet.  A part of me, becoming so aware of this tendency, this seeming procrastination, has given up on ever making any progress on this writing thing, has, in fact, accepted that it is not to be, that writing is not my fate.  And, in fact, this part has been liberating.  A writer writes, after all, and keeps writing and writes every day.  I do not.  I am not a writer.  So if I am not a writer, what am I?  I just freed up the rest of my life!  What do I want to do with it?  Focus on a career?  Well, in truth, I have made some recent headway with that, enough to give me some momentary contentment in my forward momentum through time.  Start a family?  Well, that ties into a host of insecurities and eccentricities that I haven't even begun to grapple with, and in some small way do not want to, though I know my ignoring of them is stunting my development as a fully-fledged, fully-engaged person.  I think somewhat I am waiting to deal with the second thing until I get a little farther ahead in the first thing, build up enough self-confidence to feel I can move ahead with it.  But really, even counting those two things, what do I want to spend time doing?  What do I want to do, right now, that I actually find fulfilling?  And the most obvious direct answer to this, is something artistic.  And I basically have two avenues for accomplishing this, drumming and writing.  Well, three, but the third is drawing and that I find more aggravating and am poorer at than the other two.  I don't have a working situation to play the drums regularly, and don't seem to be working too hard to be find one, and have just been playing hand drums on my legs and desktops all the time.  This is a momentary respite, but is doesn't actually feel like accomplishment, and I think I crave that sense of accomplishment, the production of something.  Unfortunately,  accomplishing something more with drumming would involve forming a band, proactively hunting for one, and that involves a lot of social work and interaction and ringleading that I do note feel up to as someone who is still completely out in lunch on melodic music theory, or I could glom onto a band with a bunch of strangers, and I don't feel like setting up my kit in some stranger's den.   So that leaves writing.  Obviously I am a nascent and a neophyte at that activity, still developing, still unpolished, and unpublished, but I do get a little tinge of satisfaction at each short piece I finish and published on the internet, throwing out into the world like spare change.  And every little piece I do create gets me closer to some goal, makes me teach myself new things and come to innately understand more aspects of narrative structure and dramatic weights and characterization and imbuing theme and utilizing language, and even if I am not destined to be a Writer in the occupation sense, that doesn't mean I can't you know write, and thus be a writer, in the general sense.   It's ok if that is not my identity, and I think in some way holding on to that particular dream is holding me back from actually reaching it, at least, for me, because of the odd backwards-forwards way my mind is wired where my hopes become work becomes stress becomes something to flee from.  It's only when I stop wanting it, when it stops being a goal, that it becomes something that I am comfortable in doing, when I realize that if there some egotistical part of myself that thinks I deserve it, that that part is wrong, for I don't deserve it, there are many many people more deserving of that something, people who actually, you know, write, and enjoy it and do it and keep doing it whether it brings them something or not, and that the fact that I beat myself up over whether a small (and I think it might actually be quite small) part of myself deserves something is a sign of my own further neuroses, after all, some people think they deserve it and use that impetus to work harder until they do really deserve it, it is only when I realize all that they I can nevermind the bollocks and just get down and get back to the fun and the the creativity, the creation, of writing.  Of taking thoughts in my head that are floating around and setting them down in cold concrete prose.  When I can get down to doing that I'll be happy.  

The absence of art is the death of the soul

I have just gone through one of my longest fallow periods, both in terms of writing and in terms of this blog, and I have to say that I think not writing is legitimately dangerous for me.  Forget art, forget prestige, or notoriety, forget trying to ever make this my profession.  Going without writing actually makes me feel physically ill.  I think the accumulated anxiety that comes from feeling either that I am not moving forward with my life, or that I am not simply creating something is causing actual physiological harm.  So I need to get back in the swing of things, working on things, not because of some larger life-goal purpose, not because it will get me where I want to go, (such a destination has been seeming more and more distant lately, but that might in large part be the anxiety talking) but because I need to be doing it just to feel good about myself right now.  Otherwise, I start feeling bad, and then I don't want to write, and then I don't write, and then I feel worse, and then I go a month without posting or completing a story and I just feel awful, awful, awful, all the time.  And that needs to stop.

So, what have I done in the meantime? 

Well, I have been cleaning my apartment.  Deep cleaning.  Like, selecting a four foot square section or and just getting all the dust and junk out of there and organizing everything and putting things away.  I have done most of the apartment now, like that, basically everything except the bathroom (which is thus now a real mess) but of course there has been some decay in earlier parts that needs to be addressed, and I still have tons of papers and mail and manuscript pages just shoved in boxes and shoved up against my bed (which I didn't clean under, at least not all the way).  But in all the apartment it much cleaner and friendlier and spacious to reside in, and I am starting to learn some good habits in terms of picking up after myself.  It has been much more pleasant to live around here after starting that project (which I have been tending to on days when I can blast my music and leave my door open and let the spring air in). 

Also, I have made a resolution to start eating less meat.  Not for any political reasons, just health.  I always feel out of sorts in my own skin, and my youthful metabolism is bound to slow down.  Plus I have just been feeling sort of undone, in some way.  So, I have been eating more grains, more salads.  Hopefully, eventually, I can cut out other unhealthy types of food, but I am taking this in a gradual manner.  My weakness is strong.  (So much of my time out here in Iowa has felt like this very gradual, three steps forwards, two steps back kind of building myself back together into some kind of complete person that I have never been before but might have been in some better version of the world.  Moving more and more towards the vegetarian side of omnivorism seems like a part of that.  I have always, in my heart of hearts, admired vegetarianism, while disdaining it, since it has seemed like something that existed outside of the bound of my own willpower.  But it would be nice to move towards it, even if I am only able to decrease the distance by half each time.)  I have also been trying to eat more fish instead of mammal, but fish is expensive and so that hasn't been going so well. 

In terms of music listening, one neat thing is that I bought a new speaker system.  With a subwoofer.  My first subwoofer!  It's great.  I love bass.  That's what I was referring to when I was talking about blasting my music: just turning on my new stereo system after hooking it up to my computer, finding a comfortable volume and just luxuriating in the crystal clarity of the sound while doing something else.  Black Sabbath never sounded better. 

In terms of new stuff, I have been listening to a lot of Amanda Palmer, both solo and past and present projects.  The Dresden Dolls.  Evelyn Evelyn.  I have both the DD albums (still need to get the EP) and the EE disc, but Who Killed Amanda Palmer? is still (I hope) in the mail.  Often I just find a playlist on Youtube and put that on, since almost all her solo stuff has a video made for it, and a lot of her live performances have their own unique charm.  I am sad that she has replaced the Pogues as my music act of the moment, and I don't feel like I was quite done with them, but that's life.  I like her voice.  I like her piano playing.  In fact, I think she had become my personal favorite piano player.  She is not as esoteric as Tori Amos.  There is more of an interests in "riffs" or what the piano equivalent would be, but there is still a lot of improvisation.  She plays piano a lot like Hendrix plays guitar (although I wouldn't go so far as to say she is the greatest ever, like I insist Hendrix is, but their approach has certain similarities.  The products of committed lovers of their instrument who just love doing whatever they can with it.  It's not dissimilar from how I like to play drums).  Also, she's engaged to Neil Gaiman, who I have always felt an odd connection to, ever since he turned my name into my favorite Sandman character, so there's that.  There is a theatricality to her approach to things, and she certainly has a love of the dramatic, but, like the Decemberists, its the kind of theatricality that is adopted so as to seek a deeper emotional level.  Through the veil of drama, something more powerful than the immediate and raw can be viewed.  Though it is veiled, it is still present, and the exactitude of the dimmed meaning is often stronger than the truths that others try to arrive at through authenticity.  Whatever that is.

Running up that hill

So lately I have been trying to study up on Latin, as I have felt, in the midst of this my wilderness, starving artist years, that I needed to do something to keep up my image as a scholarly, didactic fellow.  To these ends, I have been reading aloud from Caesar's the Gallic War, in Latin, and revisiting my Wheelock.  I have found, however, that, after my time spent with Caesar, much of my knowledge of Latin is returning, albeit half-formed, and I don't have any great desire to slog through the lesson plans all over again.  Yes, I could learn the vocabulary, but learning the vocabulary is what I am least interested in at the moment, if only because the English translation of anything I will be reading for the foreseeable future will be in the opposing page.  No, I just want to relearn the grammar, and do it without having to read all the text of the sections I have already read.

So today, I read allowed each of the first three declensions, in each gender, over fourteen times each.  I figure, if I can slowly commit the entirety of the declensions to memory, that will make the going much easier.  Besides, as the writing has progressed further, I have found greater and greater enjoyment in acts of seemingly frivolous repetition, or trial and error, like whistling.  It thinks its just the opportunity to engage my brain in activities that have no greater meaning, of any sort.  It's relaxing, in a strange way. 

the Wake

I woke up this morning with the first sentence of Finnegans Wake running  over and over again through my head. 

It was part of some understanding I was having about the rhythm of sentences, and how important it is, and necessary for good writing.  It made me want to rewrite everything that I had ever written, but then I realized that wasn't really necessary.  My best writing already tends to have a sense of rhythm.

I think.

dead weather

Not any writing lately.  I hit one of those bleak periods, where everything seems hard, the future is rearing up to scowl at me, and I am seriously doubting my abilities, or if I even have any, after reading or hearing something somewhere.  So basically, the emotional weather converged on a storm. 

But, not that bad a storm.  I feel like I am weathering it.  I think that, having gotten hit like this so many times before, I am starting to build up a defense to the feelings, and am able to just, ignore them, or rationalize them, or something.  Put them in context.  but I'm not there, all the way, yet.

2974

That's how many words I wrote today, in one story, which basically means that book I of SK is done, except for the edits.  I have reached the end.  I was thinking that I was going to stop before I reached the dream sequence, and think it over, but then I just pressed on ahead and wrote it, off the top of my head, no planning, figuring the momentum would serve better.  And I think it did.  It had the quality I had wanted, where the images slowly over took and I didn't actually know which ones represented which event, but somehow the whole arc of the dream made it's own kind of musical sense.  I expect I will not need to be making very many changes to it. 

I felt good.  I just sat down and basically just started putting one word in front of the other, until it was done.  It had all been there, somehow, I had just had to actually write it.  Well, that and do some research on the folklore concerning trees, but mostly, just write the thing.  And now the first draft is done, and I can begin editing in earnest. 

Well, not right now.  I think I am going to rest on my triumph for a while. 

Report: Nothing to report

No writing yesterday. Just didn't feel like it, for a web of reasons too tied up to really get into. Some vague dissatisfaction haunts me, I think.

I was planning on posting a short story I had written long ago, just to put some more of my work up on the internet. I was amazed to see that it had last been modified in 2005. God, have I really been chipping away at this for that long? I read through it though, to check for spelling mistakes and such, and found that I really didn't like the story anymore. It seemed cloy somehow, like it thought to much of itself, or was trying to hard to impress. I feel it didn't really represent something that I wanted to present in anyway, even as an artifact. I made me wonder how much of the rest of my stories I don't feel proud. How much crap is floating around on my hard drives?

On the other hand, it was nice to have some sign that I am improving. After all, if it was as good as I was when I was 22, they last five years would have been kind of a waste, right?

But it is kind of frustrating that I don't have anything recent to post, which I would really like to, but everything, and I mean everything, is still in a state of flux, and just not fit to print, so to speak. I'm still world-building the world the stories are all set in, and the stories keep shifting under my feet. Then there's the sections that need to be expanded, because it turns out the way I wrote it before isn't complete, or doesn't fit the beat.

interupted

Closing shifts are the worst thing in the world in terms of writing. Usually, when I write, I write in burst of two to three hours, then either cool off and go back at it, or call it a day. I can write well into the night if I am on a roll. So theoretically, having two or three hours should be plenty of time to get in a writing shift.

But on closing shift days, I just can't do it. I have done it a couple of times in the past, and just when I am in the middle of something I have had to get ready to go. And when I get back to what I was working on, I can't remember where I was going. In fact, after that, it takes even longer to get back into the the swing of things, because, since I like what I was working on, I have to wait to "remember" what I wanted to come next in order to proceed. It's like how getting woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle actually leaves you feeling more tired than completing it, even if you actually get less sleep. So, I am so afraid to write, even though I want to write, that I basically just have to take a mulligan on the whole day. It sucks.

I kind of can't wait to go to work so I can get back and start writing.

On language, sort of

One thing I have noticed, as I continue working at writing, and refining my writing, is that my mind is starting to use words not by what they mean in modern, idiomatic speech, but by what they mean in terms of the roots of the words themselves. Their actual meaning, in a sense.

I just realized this as I was organizing my bookmarks, placing similar links next to similar links, and I thought about how I wanted to cluster together the bloggers who are "journalists." But I wasn't meaning the bloggers who, say, work for a newspaper, like Ezra Klein, or who report of the news online, like TPM, or even those unaffiliated individuals who nevertheless take it upon themselves who to relay or comment upon the news of the day, like say, Donkeylicious (Hi, Neil!). I mean those who, somewhat like me, although with more of a sense of discipline and order, are engaged in maintaining a journal. For the "-ist" implies one who engages in a particular activity or in the pursuit of a specific object. Thus, a "journalist" is one who keeps a journal, or one who journals. And "journalism" is the act, or art, of journal-keeping, or of journal-writing. I was thinking of people like Lance Mannion or Aylssa Rosenberg. People who use blogs as a method of relating or recording their thoughts, and through the wonders of the internet, presenting those thoughts with a public.

Of course, I still never bother to edit these bloody dispatches, so it's still possible that these things are full of error and nonsense, and don't come across the the workings of some clear and rarified mind. In fact, most of the stuff here is just bullshit I feel like getting out of my system so I don't have to deal with it bouncing around my head anymore, with phenomenon of the public dispensation being an almost beside the point. More of a viking funeral than voyage, this place, so I don't really worry about the quality of the construction, or the finish on the wood. It's really more an attempt to shove off.

Yeah. That all held to together. Yeah.

Fever breaking

Over three thousand words today. Over 1800 of them were me just writing out character backstory, but in a way that I may or may not use as part of the body of the text at some point in the future, and over 1300 was new words for the actual body of the text which, I think in subtle ways, changes the tone of the story, but in a necessary way. It makes it less ambiguous, and removes any sense of purposely withheld drama (which I always find is more cliched and irritating than page-turning). Also requires future edits to the rest of the text to accommodate the earlier dispensation of certain pieces of information, as well as the change in tone. One of the things I realized, after reviewing the text, that the story isn't really about withholding everything from the reader, it is about relating the world that Ermys sees in front of him, but with a bare minimum of commentary coming from him, since he is not a very commentative guy. Thus, lots of details can be left out, because the aren't how Emrys would experience the world, and many can be left back in, because they are. I kind of want to go on, because I feel like the world is very present in my mind right now, but I eyes hurt from staring at the screen, and I am exhausted, so I am cashing in my creative chips for the night. I've been writing for something like three, maybe four hours now.

Earlier in the night, I had not really written anything all day, and I was feeling restless, and unhappy, and I knew what the next thing I had to write was. So I just thought, well, then write it. Stop making yourself feel bad. And I did. Now I feel pretty good. I got through a really bad spell, and am back in the game. a whole bunch of edits and ideas are piling themselves up in me right now, and I can't wait.

Realize you want to do something, then do it, and feel better. Huh. Funny how that works.

Why haven't I thought of that before?

And now for something much less depressing

Anyways, writing.

Not much on that front today either. Well, OK, not totally true. I resolved some issues of plot that needed to be resolved long ago, and also did some crucial editing. I am on track to return to the story, and make it itself. But then, my word count from probably like, less than 50. But a crucial set of fifty words! Lots of note-taking behind it, and reading and research. Oh, and pacing. Lots of pacing. I also went shopping and did the dishes, and that always feels like accomplishment.

One thing in general I feel is that the writing is slowly but surely becoming easier and more ingrained in my habits and desires. I really am, over a long period now, becoming more and more comfortable and effortless in the laying down of words and the organizing of ideas and the creation of plot. I consider my writing and am more cavalier in discarding or rearranging my ideas. I still have a ways to go, but it is coming. I even almost like editing now! That's a big thing for me!

Maybe scratch some of that last post

You know, I just read an earlier version of the first page and a half of that story, and it actually reads allright. In a different voice, but actually a pretty successful voice. Loping, descriptive passages, use of free indirect discourse for the main character's internal thoughts, and sparsely annotated passages of dialogue. It's all the changes I started making that fucked it up.

It's always a good thing to keep previous drafts lying around.

Most of writing isn't actually writing

Man, nearly a week went by, huh? I can't believe how I squander time.

I haven't got much writing done in this time either. I started writing a new story completely unrelated to anything else, and just to have something to work on, to, you know, write, that isn't so tied down to some large complex world system. Sort of a palate cleanser, if you will.

By way of comparison, I spend most of today researching the area surrounding the story that I thought I had "finished." Turns out I didn't. I printed it out, and realized that I would have to go through it, sentence by sentence, the words feel so jarring to me now. I had also, during the week, done some editing one of the other three or so interrelated text files I have up all the time on my desktop, and had finally stumbled upon something closer to what I want to be the voice of the piece. I have toyed with the idea of leaving this story as is, in a different voice, so to speak, but I find that this voice is not just different, but also inferior, and based upon certain approached to syntax that are really just unclear and needlessly messy. I tried to be poetic, and all I got was unclear.

So, it needs a new draft, into which I can then start making the necessary insertions that are necessitated by plot.

But, in order to do that, I figured I needed to make sure all the thing are correct in terms of time and place and culture. Hence all the researching today. It had been so long since I had done such things, I couldn't remember what I had based certain aspects of the story on, or if there were changes I had to make to make sure the story was historically accurate, or if there certain details that could be added to make the story more vivid, or just to make the way I went about writing it feel more lived in.

And this meant spending much of the day freaked out that certain assumptions I had based the story on were erroneous, and wondering how much of the story would have to be changed, or if the entire internal arc would have to be dumped. It looks, at this point, that that is not the case. Basically, I needed to be sure that the place I set this story in was the farthest area to the west along a border, or at least the farthest area of it's own size. (This does seem to be the case.) As this area is in France, I spent most of the day bopping around the French version of Wikipedia, as run through Google Translate, checking on all the major towns in the surrounding area, marking them on Google Maps, and taking notes on which ones existed when, and for what reasons. This was useful for more than purposes paranoid, as it a lot of the information I accumulated can be added in in ways that are useful and colorful more than destructive. Still it was a rather unpleasant experience.


By the by, the patron Saint of the region is Martin of Tours, whose feast day is November 11.

No progress

No more writing tonight. Started drinking around seven or eight. I think a part was actually freaked out about the idea of making so much progress so quickly on a story. Given I am used to short bursts of creativity interspersed by long bouts of procrastination, but this latest round of writing is almost too much. Five thousand words in four days?! When was the last time that happened? It just not done!

one voice, two voice

One thing I found out today is that different mediums are useful for different types of storytelling. I find it easier to write dialogue/conversations, if I write freehand, and easier to write descriptive passages on a computer.

With dialogue, for some reason when writing out the words longhand, maybe it's the motor-act of writing out all the words, but it is almost like the characters are conjured up, speaking to one another and not paying attention to me, and I am just transcribing what they are saying. I add in very little description, usually just whether a response happens to be nonverbal or not, and whether or not any time passes. I got through two scenes of dialogue, totaling six handwritten pages, in a little under an hour. When I try to type dialogue, I spend so much time second guessing them that what comes out doesn't really sound like how I think they should sound. Right now I am debating going back and rewriting several dialogue passages, just because I didn't write them out freehand originally. But maybe they don't need it, and it's just me.

On the otherhand, with descriptions, what I am writing is so dependant on the exact word choice, and the arrangement of words and sentences, that I am editing, cut and pasting, and rewriting so much that if I tried to do it freehand, I would just have a large pile of crossed out lines that I could never go back and decipher, and if I just kept starting over to make clear what I wanted, I would just have pages and pages devoted to getting one simple paragraph on paper. It is much easier to just erase everything I don't need as I go.

Two thousand, two hundred, and fifty words today

So far, at least. I got to the end of the main story I have been working on, though I would not say that I have complete the first draft, there is still a scene or two that I need to add into the main text, some large revisions, and then I need to do a really comprehensive edit to make sure the the references to the past add up to a concrete idea of what has actually happened. But still, I have gotten straight through to the end, and completed the main, "present day" action of the story. And that feels really, really good. This definitely gets easier the more you do.

P.S. Remember to call your Democratic Representative and urge them to PASS THE DAMN BILL, and to call your Senator and tell them that you support using reconciliation to fix all the problems that the House has with it.

Over two thousand words today

It looks like having a laptop is helping my productivity.

bleh

Really too tired to write today. Between last post and this I worked sixteen and a half hours within a twenty-seven hour period, and though I have been off work for over six hours now, I am still exhausted. And I need to be up at nine tomorrow.

However, I did come to a realization about a major plot point that had been staring me in the face for a long time, and, I now that I have realized it, a whole bunch of other stuff has opened up. This means changes, but it also means excellant opportunities, and a chance to tighten up the major thematic elements, by laying out the cards sooner as to what it's about, which means I have more time to play around with them, instead of just letting them twist in the wind as I pile up incident after incident. This is one of those times where you change your mind about some prior choice you made, then only belatedly realize you had it right the first time. Funny how many of those you run into. Sigh. It's too bad, the change comes way, way farther down the line in the writing process. I really want to start working on it now, but I wouldn't know where to start, and I am surrendering more and more to just letting the story work itself out on the page(other than advance planning such as this, of course). If I tried to start it now, I wouldn't know where to start.

Also, Mad Men was super awesome tonight.