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.
