Writers block is born out of the fear of bad outcomes. Subconsciously I think that if I don’t complete something, be it a page, paragraph, or paper, something terrible will undoubtedly happen and I will be openly mocked as a result. I will think I have completely wasted my time and everyone will be disappointed and lose respect for me.
Every writer’s block manifests itself through different symptoms and I know exactly how to recognize its onset. I will turn the television on and flip through the channels endlessly without even focusing on anything good or bad. I will continuously retype the same phrases over and over again hoping that something will jump out at me. I tend to check the same five or six websites over and over again in an endless loop. And sometimes I write about having nothing to write about.
Writer’s block comes about because it is far easier to quit than to face an undesirable outcome. In truth, I should be seizing any opportunity I can get to show off my work regardless of what I think of it. No one has to like what I write and that includes me, but I do have to accept that it was written in the first place.
The other major cause of writers block is a severe lack of data, but the piece I was having trouble writing recently doesn’t apply to this. It is about something I remember vividly and have gone through tree after tree worth of paper writing about. I have written about the incident not only in my book, but in journal entries, poems, songs with thinly veiled lyrics, letters, notes, and even in academic papers.
I set a deadline as to when I would have part three of my worst week ever series posted. I even met the deadline despite not being pleased at all with what I wrote. All the elements of the story are there just as they were before, but structurally I had created a clusterfuck.
I have a very annoying knack of serialising stories about my life. I only got into the habit of doing it once the book was completed because I thought that by building up the suspense more people would be interested in the story once it reached its conclusion. Sometimes, although admittedly rarely, this actually works well for the structure of a story. The first two parts I thought worked great. Part one was a little rushed, but that was because I eliminated many of the more boring details. I was extremely happy with how the second part turned into something I was genuinely proud of out of nothing much at all.
However, I realized almost immediately that the story wasn’t really made for three parts and that I had unwittingly screwed myself. It could really only be told as the two parts I completed or something like how I presented it in the book which would roughly be the size of a novella.
Part three was ostensibly going to be about finding out my girlfriend was cheating on me and how she dumped me only a few days after my mother’s funeral. She was the first girl I ever truly loved and the loss only added to an already shitty week. 9/11 was also that week and while it sucked pretty heavily it didn’t register with me as much as it did with those around me.
I quickly realized that the event itself had nothing really at all to connect itself to my mother’s death other than the pain I felt. I also realized that without a dearth of background information that I would have to give, the story would be utterly incoherent to anyone other than me. Quite frankly, my break-up would work well as it’s own tangential story where the death of my mother (and father who died two weeks prior to my mother passing away) was just a passing reference.
I found myself bound by the chronology that I had set in place and a deadline I had already changed twice. What I ultimately ended up with was an ungodly mess that only I could decipher but couldn’t stand to look at. I knew it was bad and I found it so unreadable that I didn’t want to attempt any more work on it.
That was pretty much when the writers block started. I had only half made my ever shifting deadline, and I felt obligated to clean up the mess I had made. I still had other things to work on that I could have shifted my focus towards and a movie I could have been watching and taking notes on for my movie time capsule blog. Instead I lamented that I was letting someone down by not posting what I considered to be my “Manos: The Hand of Fate.”
I stalled out like someone trying to learn how to drive a stick shift for the first time. I wrote, but I only worked on the same stupid things repeatedly. All that managed to get changed were how certain words and phrases sounded and nothing was done to the structure. I tried thinking of things that I could add, but in its current state of ineptitude there was nothing more I could add. It was structurally flawed (which is a generous way to put things since it implies that there was some sort of structure to begin with), but I was determined to make it work within this new hellish context.
I set it aside and wrote something short, sweet, decent and utterly inconsequential that I posted last night. While writing the Cameroon entry, however, all I could think about was how I should have been working on that albatross nesting in the hard drive. When I proofread 12 different papers over the course of the week it felt at the time like a welcome reprieve, but as soon as they were done I was immediately back to thinking about what I should have been working on. Even when doing chores like the dishes or attempting to fix the leak in the propane tank outside, I still felt that something was left unfinished.
Later in the afternoon today, I adjourned to the library with hopes of putting this project to rest once and for all. I was going to rewrite the entire thing from what I had already and ultimately see once and for all if it works or not.
It still doesn’t, so I wrote this instead. Not just to remind myself, but to help anyone who runs into the same problems when working on something troublesome. Sure, if at first you don’t succeed, try again, but if you don’t change your approach, you will doom yourself to feelings of failure and frustration. Also, when you are writing anything regardless of what it is you have to set realistic goals for yourself. Don’t cram everything in at once, but don’t get too far ahead of yourself either. Being overly ambitious can cause just as many headaches as your laziness can cause.
When I arrived back at the house I mustered up the courage to delete the whole sordid affair from the computer and for the time being from my memory. I will revisit it at a later date because it really is a great, if heartbreaking, story. It just needs the proper amount of time and nurturing.
Now that this weight is off my chest, I will go back to writing everything I have wanted to work on but have truly been neglecting. And this time I can do it without the burden of thinking I am letting anyone down.
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