TANTRUM
I’m throwing a tantrum. I’m throwing a tantrum. It’s my first one! Yaaaaar! I haven’t written a page since my last post. That means I missed a week for the FIRST TIME and I may just miss this one too. Law school is making this hard. STILL NOT HAVING MY COMPUTER is making this impossible. Writing 5 pages at a time without the computer is like making patches for a quilt and hiding them in drawers all around the house and never looking at two at once. IT’S NOT WORKING. I “should” be writing a seminar paper (easy, just needs face time), outlining (medium and not very interesting), and a couple other minor things. I can’t get in the Garza headspace enough.
I read writer blogs and books and they reprimand you that a writer writes every day, or in little bits where possible, and it’s just NOT WORKING for me. Too much head-switching. I need blocks of time and I can’t have them. Then I feel guilty because a “real” writer would write 1/8 of a chapter on an envelope with a tube of lip gloss and I must not want it enough. Fuck. I do. I just need three hours and a comfy chair and NOT the sight of tense law students with casebooks, and that’s basically impossible right now. I want to check in to a B&B for three days. Maybe that’s what I’ll do during the break between winter term and spring. Right now, I’m just irritated.
I have a book in me. But I’m looking at it through a pencil hole in a piece of paper and so it looks small and stupid. I’m trying to make spaghetti for 20 with a machine that squeezes out one piece of angel hair at a time.
And I need to write it, more than ever. I got the monthly update on my L.A. family and they’re doing badly in the usual ways (health, money, criminal records). This book gets at some of that. It exorcises some stuff. And it’s a generation that doesn’t get much play in literature. And whatever, I just like it.
And I don’t hate law school. It’s finally getting relevant and interesting. There’s just TOO DAMN MUCH OF IT.
YAAAR. This vacation only made me see how much MORE vacation I need. Still, I’m going to write this damn book. Just see if I don’t. Just…not today.
Post a comment, any comment.
Hang in there! You’re 2L, aren’t you? That’s the year I found most trying for various reasons, and I wasn’t even trying to write a novel. Except for Novembers, when I was doing NaNoWriMo, but it’s not the same. All I really wanted to say is that yes, a writer is someone who writes and many many writers do try to write every day and most of them can probably do that most of the time, but not *all* of the time. You’re trying to do two pretty big things at once. Give yourself a little slack and just stay on track as much as you can w/the novel. I bet it will all work out in the end.
About the headspace: I’ve been trying to write 2-3000 words/day for the last few days and find I have a very hard time remembering what the heck I’m supposed to be doing in the rest of my life. My head is all in my “novel,” w/nothing left for life. Right now your life is dominating. There’s a balance there somewhere, really, I’m sure there is. 😉
Fuck those writers who say you do it this way if you’re real. Writers write in a billion ways. Sometimes really fast in bursts that burn up your heart. Sometimes verrrryyyyyy slowly, two words or a sentence a day. Writers write for one hour a day while a baby naps or not for weeks, then five days in a row. Consistency is a construct that keeps you from abandoning a project when it’s difficult, but that is not the case here. Sometimes a novel takes awhile, and that’s just fine. You’ll get it written.
Keep up the good work Dre. It’s okay to have a tantrum every now and then, especially toward the end of the semester, especially during second year. But I know you’ll get back to the book and you know it too.
Besides, you’re doing better at your goal than I am. 😛