Tenacious me

20 January 2012 03:04 PM Categories: On writing

This post has been a two-day project. Don’t get too excited, though, at the word wonderland ahead. Whatever is trapped in my mind – and it is trapped, it’s smashing against the sides of my skull and heaving large objects here and there – is stuck. I’d let it out, but I can’t find the key. So I keep on trying to write it out, to construct an escape hatch, a tunnel, a trap door to freedom. I’ve used old prompts to push me forward, which has resulted in pages of words. They appear to connect, to match up, but I’m just not happy with the sentences or paragraphs. Either my take on the prompt is tiresome – do I really need to write about the last time I saw various people, especially when these people are essentially history? – or I have not yet found a way in or through or across the piece.

Everyone goes through times when writing feels impossible, but what is most frustrating about this spell is those trapped thoughts tugging at me, asking for a voice. I don’t feel empty. I feel frustrated. Sure, I could use the old schtick of breast beating and past resurrection. I could structure whatever it is that needs life into heavy metaphorical framework, thereby obscuring the poetry, the deeply felt quality of it.

Here are the elements: a dream in which I showed the boy how he could blot out the moon with his thumb, and an email from a friend discussing the flood of mutual feeling that emerged when she recently ran into a man who broke her heart decades ago (thanks, b.). The moon fakes a glow, it reflects the light of another; despite its fakery, the moon has power over the oceans, the pull over water and blood; blotting it with a finger is a fraud; our attempts to pretend that deep, inexplicable connection doesn’t exist are a form of cheating the self: moon/ trickster/ tides/ love/authenticity.

Maybe it’s as simple as that, a series of words. Maybe I’ve just been on a throat-clearing binge, need to write and write and write until I get to the point or until the point gets to me. It’s so easy to give up on this stuff, especially when the only compelling reason to keep going comes from within me. Nobody's paying me for this, or giving me a grade, and having the willpower to struggle through self-doubt, foolishness, and what appears to be my own incompetence is not one of my strong points.

The Round Robin starts up again on Sunday. I think I need to challenge myself to not go back to the old themes, to try and divert myself from familial dirges and soaking in the past. Those themes and approaches are too easy. The less sleep I get (my sleeping tends to suffer during the RR – I race to wake up and start writing as early as possible), the darker my writing becomes, too. I don’t necessarily want to avoid darkness, but I do want to avoid the incessantly inward glance. So I need to keep up with my sleep, to remind myself that I have the time.

Attempting to direct my writing may initially result in some pretty poorly written work. It’s unfamiliar territory and will be necessarily self-conscious at first. Or maybe it won’t. But I don’t want to give up on something just because I am not immediately competent. I have to give myself permission to be bad at it. I think that’s the key to a lot of new things for me – I need permission to do poorly, on the assumption that I will learn and improve (or stop after I've tried repeatedly without improvement). In other words, I can set myself up to work through self-doubt by being easier on myself, by allowing myself to fail. If I allow myself to fail and give myself room to learn (and to be unknowing), I can develop tenacity. Willpower.

Hmm. I feel that heart warmth, the faint burn of waiting tears, a recognition of the truth. Is this part of what is going on in my mind, the thoughts that will out? What the fuck do they have to do with the moon and love? Am I distracting myself with metaphorical baubles while the rest of me struggles with what it will take to change my writing (and anything else that needs a rethink)? Maybe.

Maybe it’s all very simple and I just haven’t been able to see it until now.