Random Theories and Rantings

(a few days old, from 2/5/03)
The well has run dry, or at least it seems to have. I'm finally in a job where my poor brain doesn't have to analyze and write all day and I can't write for myself. Its funny (at least I find it funny in an uh oh sort of way, not the ha ha sort of way), I'm flying (or waiting to taxi at Hartsfield) to Memphis to get two groups of complete strangers to listen to music for two nights and I can't even get a good line about Elvis out.

I'm starting to think that writing, while a joy when you get it right, is the hell I've thought it was. Most of the time I think I might actually look for an excuse to get out of writing. Laundry, cutting the grass (which is ironic since in my townhome community it's done for me), washing the dog, all seem like better ideas. It's like when you're a kid and someone tells you to perform a task or chore that is too strenuous or painful. Writing is the one activity like that for me. The problem is, I'm the one setting the high, high standards.

We're talking Herculean task kinds of stuff. Slaying the hydra of plot and character holes (and all the shit I don't remember, but it has its own analogies and metaphors. I promise).

See, whenever I get lost or frustrated I do two things: one I curse. The other (that would be two) is I jump to a totally new idea without connecting it fully (or at all) to the first idea I was joting down. I suck at starts, ends, and stuff happening. Let me write about something (or more aptly, nothing), with no plot or development and I am golden. Otherwise its time to start smoking again.

That's another thing (and another unrelated theme); smoking. I quit in September and I still equate (shit I mean associate) it with writing. S (my previously unintroduced and likely to stay unnamed girlfriend) would say that's just me being silly, though I miss it a LOT! Some days more than others, but a lot when I'm trying to write for some strange reason. Though in the same breath S would tell me that Stephen King continually writes about it, which I thought was pretty cool even though I'm not into the whole horror genre thing.

Maybe once I get to the hotel it will come more easily. Right now my thoughts are scattered and consist of growing frustration with writing, work, worries about money, the shaking of the plane (normal on takeoff but making it impossible to perform the act of writing and girls. The girls part is always there, what can I say??