I left my job at the end of November so that I could spend time with my family in Washington and try to get some writing done. I thoroughly enjoyed my vacation, and have been averaging 1,000 words a day, but I still haven’t managed to accomplish anything. Last month alone, I wrote just over 32,000 words, and I’m no closer to finishing the book I set out to write than I was before I quit, or at any point over the last 15 years. This blog has been a wonderful exercise in the craft, but I’m still waiting on the words to get me started on the thing I feel I have to say. When I was going full steam before, I could lose myself in the process, and be done with a story in an evening. Heck, when I was in the 8th grade, I started writing a fantasy novel, and got something like fifteen chapters in before even I had to admit that it was just a parade of cliches. I didn’t stop because I ran out of story, though. I just realized that the story that I’d been telling had been told too many times to take a chance on. And now I’m sitting on this thing which is good, and topical, and has the potential to actually mean something, and I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to talk about the weather because I don’t know how to get started.

And because I’ve waited so long to even come to terms with that, the time has come for me to look for ways to try and bring in income, and it’s tempting to fall back into the Bi-Polar self-ridicule, and allow myself to believe that maybe this just isn’t the life for me. Maybe the best that I can hope for in my life is to run a restaurant. I know that’s just the depression talking, and that even though it’s just a chemical imbalance in brain that it can feel physically overwhelming. That’s why I’m trying to move this column along at a fair clip, and keep it balanced by a heavy dose of sarcasm and snark. I’ve got countless incidents of anecdotal evidence as to why I should give up, and just let myself become a normal guy, but I’m terrified to think that if I let myself become him, that I’ll have to reevaluate the parameters of my ego, and that’s not something that I’m willing to accept. I’ve got a track record of having usually being right (and even the times I’ve gotten it wrong have most often led to situations which eventually proved the initial point), and who am I to argue with myself? If I’m forced to draw a line in the sand somewhere within my mind, I don’t know where that will wind up leaving me. And if I have to divorce my dreams from my expectations, I don’t know who will get to keep my stuff, and which friends will decide they like me better.

This is the last obstacle to overcome. I know that I can write. I’ve actually learned how to do something that I’ve never been able to do before, and that is to get started without a muse. Some of my better pieces in The Vaults have been slow starters. Things I wrote, not because I especially felt like they needed saying, but because I told myself that I needed to do this everyday (with a handful of days off each month), or what was the point in giving up my job? It probably has just come down to mindset. The Book is still up on a pedestal, too important to get wrong, whereas I probably won’t be garnering much praise for this blog, regardless of how awesome I can make it. I hate it when I make a point to myself, and hide it in the past…

A few days ago, I was discussing the banality of evil, and how grandiose gestures generally didn’t cut it when it came to make a difference. And if I just tweak the context a tiny bit, and cross the line into the land of metaphor, that point applies just as well to this problem that I’ve been having. I’ve convinced myself that I need to change the world, and that the book I write has got to knock my point right out of the park (Mixed Metaphor: shaken, not stirred). But going for a hole in one (that’s three metaphors in a single paragraph! Watch out!) means that I’m more likely to wind up in a sand trap (did I use that right? I don’t golf.), banging away in futility instead of steadily making progress. I think I know why my wife gets so frustrated with me: I’m intolerable when I’m right. I can just feel my inner know-it-all smirking at the glacial pace I’ve taken to finally make it here.

Of course, knowing is just the first step (but apparently, half the battle), so that still leaves me with the unenviable task of getting over myself and getting down with the clackety-clack. I am a master of procrastination, and I thrive on the battlefield of deadlines. Well, sometimes: I’m just as likely to sound a full retreat when it looks like I’m outmatched. But it’s the terror of the last minute which often inspires me to bypass all the reasons why I can’t, and shows me the secret path to victory.

Okay, I think I’ll have to do something drastic, or I’ll never get around to it. Starting today (I was going to say tomorrow, but that wouldn’t help with the procrastination), in addition to the blog, I’m going to write 1,000 words on this mythical and elusive novel that I intend to sell someday. Obviously, I’m not going to be posting on the website, but I will start each subsequent blog with an update as to where I am. The only reason I got this far was by forcing myself to write for an audience that I may one day possess, not the one I have today.

 

-Tex