A Rant on Writing by Nancy Grossman-Samuel

Why is it that it takes 6 weeks of hard core dieting and watching everything that goes into my mouth to lose 10 pounds, but less than half that time to find those vacationing pounds and have them comfortably park themselves back on my quickly expanding body?

Why is it that sometimes I have the will power of the titans and other times behave like a voracious non-thinking organism who can eat non-stop from morning till evening.

And why is it I can write for 10 minutes at a stretch relatively easily and as many times as we decide to when I’m with my Peeps in our writing group, but put me alone at my desk with hours to spare and I will do everything but write (well, not everything – mostly eat and play games, though I do sometimes actually accomplish things I need to get done).

It’s amazing how many times I've made deals with myself only to break them. I get up in the morning and tell myself today is the day I will spend an hour writing, but by noon and certainly by 6:00pm, that resolution or decision is toast even though I continually perseverate on it in my head.

Truly, my self-trust level is into the ‘I’d freeze if it were a temperature’ level – and I don’t mean get a little frost bite – I mean full on frozen on impact.

I wonder if the truth is that I really don’t want to write, but if that is true, why do I keep trying to do it or at least keep trying to talk myself into doing it, and why does every psychic I've ever gone to tell me I should be writing?

I love the IDEA of writing. I LOVE the idea. But I don’t love the action, usually, unless I’m on a roll. Truth be told, I really have nothing to say – my life has been relatively boring and mild and I have little in my past to call upon. I don’t have the crazy childhood and life of a Jeannette Walls or the crazy wonderful imagination of a J.K. Rowling. I like to pretend that I do. I wish I did, but I don’t, and it’s frustrating, and I would love to be talented like that. I would love to have ideas just pouring into my head from the great somewhere and out onto my keyboard or paper.

I recently went to a talk at South Coast Rep before going to see their main stage play Rest. I listened with rapt attention and obsessive interest to Michael Roth talk about soundscaping and composing for the play and I heard him say, and this just hit to the core of me – I heard him say that if he could do anything at all, he’d just sit in his room and compose.

God how I wish that were me. How I wish that there was so much alive inside of me that wanted to come out that all I wanted to do was fill up notebook after notebook with ideas and thoughts and characters and situations. I am constantly in awe of bookstores and libraries. They are filled with the results of people whose passion for writing just won’t let up.

I love reading great writing and by great, I am not in the nose in the air camp that says that it has to be Chekhov to be good. It can be Stephen King, or Robert Craise, Fanny Flagg, or Jeannette Walls, or dozens and dozens of other people with a story to tell who tell it with authenticity, passion, and, often, humor.

I love a good story. I would also love to be known for telling a good story and there is a part of me that will never give up hoping that I can turn out a story that makes people laugh or tear up or at least feel something. So, like the Barenaked Ladies say in “Odds Are,”

“So get up, get up

No it’s never gonna let up

So you might as well sing along”

And I will keep writing or thinking about writing, even if it kills me.