Don't bother me I'm writing

"There was no magic banner that appeared over your crib at birth saying, "Yes, this one, let's make this one's life an agonizing, lonely struggle with very little money and even less success. Let's make this one a WRITER."--Caroline Sharp  Writing is a disease--a sort of psychosis--and people who do it well share the same set of symptoms or neuroses--which ever term suits your fancy. A friend lent me a great book about writing through writers block-- A Writer's Workbook --by Caroline Sharp. In it, Sharp identifies many truths about the chore of writing--perhaps most affirming, if you identify yourself as a writer, is a tidbit from author Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote the forward. Gilbert recollects a phone conversation she had with a writer friend about not writing. The friend posed a hypothetical question: "Would you rather wash all your dirty laundry, run it through the drier, fold it, put it all away in your drawers, and then take t...

I think I've mentioned once or twice that writing sometimes feels like death -- or what I imagine feels like death, because I've never come close to dying as far as I know. It might feel more like childbirth without drugs -- which I DO NOT recommend and can say with authority feels much worse than running out of words to put on paper. So it's not as bad as death, but it's quite maddening when you want to say something and have nothing to say. I'm always curious how other writers manage their demons. Many refuse to speak on the subject, while others write long winded how-to manuals or -- worse -- advise would-be authors and journalists to do something else -- so screw them.  My demons are topics. The words come out fine when their focused on something I care about, but sometimes I really don't give a crap -- then writing is hell, like I'm standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open -- I'm starving and there's a million things to eat ...

I'm a sentence away from postal -- from chucking my computer at the wall and stomping on it until its guts are embedded in the soles of my feet. I want to set it on fire and breathe in the toxic fumes until my brain goes all fuzzy. And -- when I recover -- I want to pummel the charred corpse of my computer with a really big stick and throw whatever's left in the blender and then the microwave, because nothing drives me battier than the troll in the blank page -- the invisible bitch who screams in my face "you have nothing of value to fill in the void." I often feel like Sesame Street's Don Music, who slammed his head against the piano and sobbed hysterically over any little mistake or unforeseen challenge. My writing self is a bipolar monster with claws and fangs. She swears a lot and shouts out nonsensical words like "gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-gr" and "aarg" like maybe she's eating a pirate. She nags me on the bus with the what-are-you-goin...

Last night -- when I started this post fully intending to publish it by my self-imposed deadline of 11:59 p.m. Monday through Friday (Saturdays and Sundays are optional) -- I was watching How to Train Your Dragon with Ashlyn. This was worth celebrating as it marked our apparent graduation from the Deathly Hallows and Michael Myers to something light and cheerful. We've watched the first installment of the final Harry Potter story some 20 times since it's Oct.8 premier on HBO. It's the only thing to do in my bedroom as far as Ashlyn's concerned. Every Saturday and Sunday morning -- every weekday afternoon upon my arrival home from work -- Ashlyn leads me up the stairs chanting "Ha-we Potta, Mommy. Ha-we Potta."  If I'm in my room writing I can set my clock by the protests that go on in the hallway outside. The muffled giggle and thunk-thunk of a small fist hitting my door are followed by a few moments of quiet, in which I can hear her breaths getti...

There's a song I like to sing when I'm having a bad day. It mentions chain saws and ripping people's heads off and fat lips and blood stains. And that's how I'm feeling right now for no particular reason other than I'm tired and my house is a mess and my kids are noisy and my husband farts too much and I haven't gotten any substantial writing done in weeks. Boo hoo -- right? I have this block of wood that I salvaged from the scrap pile when Jerod -- my bless-ed husband -- framed in our basement in Pullman. It's about the size of a brick, and I picked it up one night after Jerod and I had a knock-down-drag-out over something really important like a wad of my hair in the bathtub or his tapered Levis that made him look like a 50-year-old Bible salesman. I wanted a bat, but all I could find was a block of wood. I kicked it across the garage a couple of times. I beat it with a hammer, and I kicked it some more. I needed a comeback to whatever zinger sent...

I hear voices. Sometimes they talk all at once, and I can’t distinguish one from the other or what they’re telling me. They talk to me at work and in the car -- always at a time and place that is wholly inconvenient. I pull my hair and tell them to shut up. And then, when I’m open to them -- when I’m ready with a pen and paper to jot down every word -- they shun me except to rant on my mediocrity. During my dark years of unemployment, for instance, the voices -- and I’m only guessing here to excuse their vicious diatribes against me -- were apparently sick on vacation or robbed at gunpoint or detained at Customs. I tried to write in their absence, but my words were dull and clumsy. I consulted my good friends Merriam Webster and Will Shortz. I read a lot of books and highlighted words and phrases that inspired me. But I couldn’t write a word without my voices. I decided to give it a rest -- if I focused on something else the words would come eventually. I blamed it on television....

I return from the brink of death with this sweet recollection from childhood: I navigated a very peculiar phase in my fourth year of life on this a planet – a sort of Dr. Frankenstein period in which I attempted through various methods to engineer a playmate. It began on Christmas with the excruciating disappointment that all children feel upon receipt of their last package – that inevitable “where’s the other stuff I asked for?” moment. Santa Claus forgot to stuff a sibling in my stocking. And there hatched the first of many schemes to expand my social network. I wished to become a mother hen – which to a 4-year-old who doesn’t grasp the basic principles of procreation means sitting on eggs from the ice box. The plan was very simple. Step 1: Build a nest in my bedroom. Step 2: transfer one carton of eggs to aforementioned nest and sit. All but two of my unborn friends were smashed – tragically – in their nest of fancy throw pillows and freshly launder...

Writing about writing -- or trying to write and failing -- is stupid. I have the time to write this , I should be writing something else. But This is my experiment. I'm a perfectionist, and it often happens that I sit down in front of my computer with a million ideas bouncing off the walls of my brain. They're screaming they're so excited to get the F out. I manage to pound out a few sentences before this lunatic inside of me seizes on a misplaced comma or an awkward word and takes over. An entire day will pass -- my ideas die in utero, my head hurts ... A single, perfect sentence stares back at me from the monitor, and then it's time for bed. This is my diary of drivel -- my place to rant about family and politics and whatever else is gumming up the works inside my brain. In other words, don't bother me I'm writing , will serve as a laxative for my literary constipation.