Procrastination was the title of T.S. Garp's first novel
In my blockage-inspired funk tonight, while clicking around looking for other writing-focused blogs, I discovered that one of my current favorites, William Gibson, kept a blog for awhile but abandoned it because, in his words, "it never fail(ed) to underline the fact that if I’m doing this I’m definitely not writing a novel."
It pains me to admit it, but he's got quite a point. He's got such a point he has stabbed me in the head with it and skewered me to the wall, where I dangle helplessly by my thick skull. (But still not unblocked.) If I'm to create any project of substance, I need to unzip its skin, get inside of it, and not come out until I've finished it. This means minimal kvetching in this blog about how I'm not writing it, because if there's any activity that's less writing a novel than blogging, it's blogging pointedly about how you're not writing. Not that I'm not finding it therapeutic to vent in here when my characters have all glassed themselves in and refused to let me in on what they're doing.
So here is my incentive. I'm doing a metaphorical temporary unplug. I will not be returning here until I have written at least five pages.
(Speaking of William Gibson, another post for another time is a musing on the Gibsonian idea of having a "brand allergy". Pattern Recognition is easily one of the best books I've read this year. If you're even further behind the times than I am, I humbly suggest it to you as an example of an awesome read. As a nicemodernist, I want you, my fellow lovers of literature, to be as blown away by this book as I was.)
I feel the story shifting around inside of me and contemplating overruling the blockage, but then again, I also had a Taco Bell Crunch Wrap for lunch today. Also, I just took 5 mg of a popular prescription sleep aid, so my brain plays some odd tricks on me in the final seconds before complete system shutdown. I once opened my paper journal to a page full of totally nonsensical words that I'm sure articulated something very deep at the time. All the good literary substance abuse issues were taken - Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Trainspotting, everything anybody within 5 miles of the Algonquin Hotel wrote between 1920 and 1935, some other examples the brain is refusing to cough up and is instead is playing that little "windows is shutting down your computer" song in my ears, only it sounds sort of surrounded by that weird hollow-static rushing noise you hear inside your head when your ears pop.
Now, I sleep. If I have any readers left in the morning, I'll consider elaborating on brand allergy.
It pains me to admit it, but he's got quite a point. He's got such a point he has stabbed me in the head with it and skewered me to the wall, where I dangle helplessly by my thick skull. (But still not unblocked.) If I'm to create any project of substance, I need to unzip its skin, get inside of it, and not come out until I've finished it. This means minimal kvetching in this blog about how I'm not writing it, because if there's any activity that's less writing a novel than blogging, it's blogging pointedly about how you're not writing. Not that I'm not finding it therapeutic to vent in here when my characters have all glassed themselves in and refused to let me in on what they're doing.
So here is my incentive. I'm doing a metaphorical temporary unplug. I will not be returning here until I have written at least five pages.
(Speaking of William Gibson, another post for another time is a musing on the Gibsonian idea of having a "brand allergy". Pattern Recognition is easily one of the best books I've read this year. If you're even further behind the times than I am, I humbly suggest it to you as an example of an awesome read. As a nicemodernist, I want you, my fellow lovers of literature, to be as blown away by this book as I was.)
I feel the story shifting around inside of me and contemplating overruling the blockage, but then again, I also had a Taco Bell Crunch Wrap for lunch today. Also, I just took 5 mg of a popular prescription sleep aid, so my brain plays some odd tricks on me in the final seconds before complete system shutdown. I once opened my paper journal to a page full of totally nonsensical words that I'm sure articulated something very deep at the time. All the good literary substance abuse issues were taken - Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Trainspotting, everything anybody within 5 miles of the Algonquin Hotel wrote between 1920 and 1935, some other examples the brain is refusing to cough up and is instead is playing that little "windows is shutting down your computer" song in my ears, only it sounds sort of surrounded by that weird hollow-static rushing noise you hear inside your head when your ears pop.
Now, I sleep. If I have any readers left in the morning, I'll consider elaborating on brand allergy.
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