Writing Block

 -the key to  your continued motivation. Writer's spend a lot of time at their writing because it gives them great pleasure.

Steve Kowit 

Note: I just came back to this entry after seeing that it was recently read and I noticed so many typos and spelling errors that I somehow missed when I wrote it. How distracting they are. I fixed it up a bit. By the way, I did finish her story... turning it into a fiction based on real life events...and I went back to a sample I recently sent out. I was not happy with it...especially the introduction.   I spent so much time on that trying to put the memory of that little street into images and sound...I probs overwrote it big time...yet I am so attached to those words because of the memory. It feels more like a draft.  I can write better.  I know I can. Anyway...I wrote her story. :)

I was going to finish my novel based on my sister's story.  I made a commitment. I told myself I could not focus on any other writing until I completed it once and for all. 2000 words a day.  And it is true...it was somewhat of an obstacle on my writing path...sitting there blocking a clear focus of other writing behind it...but that didn't stop me from writing other stuff.  Just meant that it wasn't focused writing with clear writing goals and agenda. It was in fact creating a very disorganized , "incomplete" writing agenda. Leaving me feeling a little "chaotic" as a writer. I told myself that the chaos would give way to pleasure once that book was "out of the way". 

Why can't I finish it? 

I am going to have to  admit to being blocked.  It was hard for me to come out and say that but I guess I am.  If one is writing the same book for more than five years...when they have written books before in less than six months...that is blocked. I made a commitment to finish it before February 1...ten days away...but I did not write my 2000 words a day which I would have needed to do to get my word count.  

I used several different excuses and rationalizations...I blamed my lack of effort on some pressing life circumstances which is true...that kept me away...I told myself and others that other " more important" things needed to be looked after and there was some truth in that as well. I also fell on the fact that I have been feeling a little bit more fatigued than normal and I needed to look after my health. That was all good  and true too. But the truth is I have been looking for reasons not to go to this book. 

 I know me...when I am meant to do something...I do it...no matter what is happening  around me.  I feel the pull...I go...and I feel the pleasure  For some reason the pull isn't there right now...it is more like this book is pushing me away and I am not sure why.  Even when I forced myself to sit down with it...I wrote the 2000 words on more than one occasion since my New Year's commitment but there is so little "heart" in those words  and the  writing sucks! I feel so much "obligation" and "have to" and "should" and that is the antithesis to creativity. 

I tell myself it is the fact that the book requires me going back to past trauma memory, and though there is truth in that...since January first  I wrote a short story and two poems based on trauma memory.  That memory and trapped emotion wants to come out through creative expression and it is.  So it isn't even that.  

So I don't know why I am stuck and why I am resisting the story or why the story is resisting me. I just know it is what it is and that's okay.

I have also been writing my "poetic memoir" which seems to be coming out a lot easier.  I know I need a lot of "help" with my poetry.  My sister gave me a copy of In the Palm of Your Hand  by Steve Kowit for Christmas. It is like a poetry workshop/class between two covers. Amazing and so helpful. The two poems I wrote came as part of the assignment to write poems based on memory.  The short story was an expansion to one of those poems.  I can look at that writing and feel the connection to it...it is more real.

Do I heed the feeling that is pushing me away from my sister's story or do I push past it? 

I don't know yet but I will figure it out.  

All is well