Leaving Stasis

Here’s what I’ve come to. And this has something to do with the Writer’s Block I was talking about before. See, I keep thinking about practicing this and practicing that by doing short-shorts or by editing some old piece of junk, and even when I’m getting myself to make progress, when I’m beating the block, I’ve been feeling like I kind of don’t care.

And it’s not that I don’t care about writing. That’s blasphemy. It’s terrible. It’s the kind of thought that leaves me cold inside if I keep it in my head for too long. No, I’m not not caring about writing. Hell no, I’m not doing that. I’m just not caring about what I’m writing.

I’ve run into this before. It’s usually happened when I’m trying to force a character type or turn a plot point that I’m not naturally inclined to turn, and it usually happens because when I do that, I’m actually forcing myself to write something I’m not interested in. I have written a story where I said “this guy is a jerk” and then followed that mission statement, letting it override every other inclination I have. And then I don’t care about the guy. Because he’s a jerk. Because he’s not redeemable. Because I’ve strayed so far from what I care about that there is nothing in that character for me. I’ve done that, and when I edit I always end up changing it, because a whole hell of a lot of the joy of writing is knowing that you’re writing something you would buy if somebody else’s name was on the spine. And I wouldn’t buy a story about that jerk.

This isn’t that, though. I keep trying to do something new. I keep trying to add to my pile. I have stories. I have documents that need to be edited. That need to be finished. And lately, more and more strongly, I don’t want to leave them alone.

I think that it might have to do with the fact that the rest of my life is in stasis. The Holiday season is sucking the opportunities out from under me. I got another rejection e-mail today. I want something to go somewhere. And the one thing I have the most direct control over is my own writing. So I can write new things and watch the pile grow, or I can finish an older thing and try to get published.

And I really feel like finishing something right now.

So I’m going to do that. There is a story that I care about enormously. It is about a fictional version of myself (pretentious, no?). It is probably the best thing I’ve written to date, and I desperately want people to see it. I desperately want people to see it finished. In print. I’m going to work on that.

And I’ll care about what I’m writing. Which will be a nice change.