I've been using pen and page lately and scribbling out the gunk that clogs my brain drain that way instead of here.  What I'm noticing about this is that when I get an idea, it stays in the notebook/binder (whichever I happen to be using at the time) and doesn't ever get developed.  I'm not sure why this is, but it is, and I don't have to tell you that it's not what I'm after.

If I'm going to do morning pages a la artist's way, I want results.  I want to be writing more than the gunk that clogs my brain drain.  I want stories and poems.

It's been a long time since I wrote anything but blogs and acceptance letters for SaucyVox submissions.  (I don't like thinking much about the rejection letters.  They make me feel like an ogre!)  I wrote an edition of The Writer's Sauce, but that was too easy to be considered work.  As far as anything fictional or poetic goes - well, all my energy is being directed into Saucy, and that's frustrating me.

I could say it's for lack of time that I don't write, but that would be a lie.  I can easily find an hour or two a day to commit to actual writing (as opposed to blogging).  The problem is that I have too many ideas milling around in my head, and none of them grab me by the throat and insist - YOU MUST WRITE ME.

They're all slothful ideas.  They laze about on the couch of my gray matter and groan and moan about the heat.  They are ambivalent about being written.  Write me, don't write me, they say.  What do I care?  I'm sweltering here.  Pass me the ice water, will you?

I guess the lesson here is that I should be writing anyway.  I'm beginning to understand that writing is a lot like sex: The more you do it, the more you want to do it.  The less you do it, the easier it is to put it off until you have more energy/more lust/less heat/more lube.

I asked Darklin a question last night.  "If a chronic alcoholic took out a life insurance policy on themselves and then died of sclerosis of the liver or some other alcohol related disease, would the policy cash out?"

I was thinking about writing a story about a woman whose alcoholic father dies, leaving her a tidy sum.  I was thinking about how she might feel, especially if her father had never been there for her.

Other lazy ideas include: A woman whose discarded journal is fished out of the garbage at a local coffee shop, and returned to her with notes and questions scribbled in it.  A relationship develops via this method of communication.  She writes, leaves the notebook sitting at her usual table, and her anonymous reader comments on what she's written.  She develops, first a dependency, and then a renewed sense of autonomy through the relationship that never brings the two characters face to face.

Another is a woman who loses her husband, and then her will to do much of anything and only really hangs on because her adult daughter needs her.  Through a crisis in her daughters life, she finds her will to live a juicy, full life renewed.

Another is about a relationship that ends prematurely, before all the stuff is worked out and how each character is affected through the years by that.  I see the couple getting back together when they are old a la Love In The Time Of Cholera, but in a modern setting and with more of a sense of hope.

A woman finds herself in a psych hospital for self-injury - her husband commits her - and she goes from hating to loving another patient.  The relationship with this older woman helps her heal somehow, but I haven't any idea how yet.

A submissives journey from vanilla to thoroughly broken and blissful.  A survivor of child abuse come to a place of forgiveness with her abuser.  An adoption story.  A story about female circumscision.  A story about a woman from rural Quebec who leaves the nunnery after twenty years of being married to the church.

Ideas a plenty, but nothing written.

***

Last night, Darklin and I were watching Fine Print, which is a show that features a different book and author each episode.  The author appears to talk about their book, and the host, who has read the book, asks questions that a reader might ask.  I really enjoy watching it.  I like finding books to read through watching it, and I like putting faces to the names of authors I might have read or might, in future, read.

Darklin said "One day, that will be you sitting there."

I beamed at him.  His faith in me is enormous considering I haven't written a g_d thing in months, have finished all of three short stories in the last several years, and can't even remember how to write poetry anymore.  His faith is contagious, too.  I nodded, and agreed.  Yes, it will be me sitting there one day discussing my book. I don't even want it to be a bestseller, necessarily, though that would be gravy.  I just want it published and read and enjoyed and discussed.

But I have to write it first.

Currently Reading: Evolutionary Witchcraft - T. Thorn Coyle
Currently Listening: Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams

I feel trapped.

It's making me crazy.

F

Just so no one panics: I feel trapped because I can't write/go anywhere/do anything other than housework.  It isn't about anyone else.  No one can fix it, no one can help except by listening to me vent without getting all wounded, which will result in my feeling loved and understood.

I'm beginning to think we should all come with a manual.

"Please refer to manual, page 432, for instructions on how to handle trapped female whose only outlet has been stripped from her due to keyboard malfunction."

I can only stand to type so much on this friggen keyboard.  The space bar requires the strength of ten men to work, and my thumbs get sore after the first few sentences.  Makes writing *anything* really frustrating.

New keyboard, please?  Soon?  *Whimper*

Stupid thing.

I was very restless last night and wanted to write, so I tried longhand, but it stalled my brain.

This is useless.  I type 120 wpm.  This bit o' crap took me about three minutes to type.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I'm scribbling in my Moleskin with a black Bic pen, letting myself write, uncensored, and I see my hand form these words:

When have I ever been this much at peace?  What if it all blows up and goes to hell?

And there it is.  The crux of it.  Peace is so unfamiliar a thing.  Ordinary, common joy is so much an unknown, that when I experience it, I write it off as escapist.

Curled up on the couch with Darklin, watching junk t.v. is ordinary joy. On the surface, that's all it is.  Beneath the surface, it represents a longer held love, a realized hope, a sureness, a comfort, a knowing that shines, a quiet, perfect thread in a riotous tapestry.

This restlessness, this enormously pregnant feeling, this fear of staying still, this seeming inability to move forward - it's all wrapped up in knowing real comfort, real rootedness, for the first time in my life.

It's fear of keeping still that keeps me still, braced, ready for anything.