Writer's Block, or not

I don't really like the term.  I often say I have Writer's Panic instead -- which is what I call the feeling that you're swamped and drowning and never going to get anywhere with your project.  And in fact, over the past few months, I have written some 20,000 words of a brand new project and made some huge but very freeing changes on my WIP, which has caused that to take off in a new direction.  So it's not that I don't have ideas.  The ideas are there, while I'm driving or sweeping or working.  The problem is putting the ideas down on paper.  The fear when I sat down to write was so strong, that even when I made myself do it, after a little while I would think, "well, maybe I better stop now, while things are still good.  After all [insert here anecdote about famous writer who only wrote two pages a day.]" 

This fear was something new.  I'd never really felt it before, writing.  And the odd thing was it kept coming back.  I could have a really good day writing and the next day, sitting down, the same old procrastination and hesitation.  In other words, success had no effect on the fear, which seemed to be contrary to the conventional wisdom that doing something you fear makes the fear go away.  I thought it was maybe more like stage fright.  I'd heard stories -- we all have -- of well-known actors who suffered from stage fright every night, at least until the curtain came up.  I looked for books on stage fright, but everything I found was aimed at children.  So I looked for more general books on fear.  These were, of course, self-help books.  Oy. Brain chemistry for dummies.  Vignettes about high-powered executives at Fortune 500 companies who were freed to follow their dreams of entrepreneurship.  (There are no creative types in self-help books; I believe the authors think that creative people float around with little wings on their backs, drawing rainbows and hearts in the air.)  However, I did learn some useful stuff from these books, in the end.  I had an insight, reading one in particular -- this was not something that actually appeared in the book, but a thought that came to me while reading it:
You will always feel anxiety when you are doing something important.
You will always feel it in proportion to what you are trying to do.

I don't know why, but this was comforting.  I suppose the self-help books would say I gave myself permission to have anxiety.  I'm working, I'm working hard, I will have anxiety, I'll be OK. 
I also began to set daily goals for writing, which is something I never felt the need to do before.  Not word count goals, but lists of scenes I need to work on.  I look at the goals, say, this is what I'm going to do today, and I focus on that. 

The upshot of this is that stuff gets done.  Do I still have the fear?  Yes.  This post?  Total procrastination. All I can say is that the fight goes on.

Two scenes...or how I spent my summer vacation

Hanksville, Utah, is in the middle of a country of reefs, buttes and sand dunes. We stopped at the store there for sodas.  Inside, eating pizza, were two teenage girls.  Makeup:  lots of blush, lots of eye makeup, like people used to wear to go clubbing in the 80s.  One of them had large sunglasses on, the other had perched a pair of rabbit ears on her head.  She wore a tank top over a shirt, then a kind of stomacher and under that a polka-dot skirt.  Mismatched stocking socks, one red, one blue.  The other one was more or less the same:  sort of a parody of high style, or fashion.  I nodded at them (in places like Hanksville, you say hi to everybody) and they looked up but didn't say anything.  It was the middle of the week, the end of the day, quarter to five, cloudy, in a place that doesn't get much rain.  The girl behind the counter was dressed in a Hollister t-shirt.  When we left the store we saw them walking along the main street.  One of them stuck out her thumb, as if she wanted to hitch a ride from the pickup truck behind us.

It had once been an roadside cafe, back in the 50s or 60s.  There was still a sign, Ben's Cafe * Steaks * Dining Room, and above the sign was a three-dimensional star, with some of the bulbs missing.  Now it was La Veracruzana.  It still had the long luncheonette counter and green vinyl stools, although the new owners had put up fake wooden shutters on the walls, to imply Mexico.  We were the only customers for a few minutes, and then another group came in, a man in a cowboy hat, some middle-aged women.  They began to talk to the waitress.  She was going back to college in a few weeks, right?  And was she still thinking about law school?  Did she still want to specialize in immigration?  A younger man and woman joined the group, and the topic shifted to cattle rustling.  Someone last spring had lost 26 calves.  Those calves would be worth $60,000 now.

This business of making stuff up

It makes you think about how we have months named after Roman emperors and days named after out of date gods.  (Which is really cool actually, and if you abandon that, you're left with French Revolution-type names like "Fog," and "Heat," although apparently the Bulgarians, Romanians and other Eastern Europeans call their months that as well.) 

And the perfection of certain English words.

"Moonshine," for instance.  Perhaps only bettered by "hooch." Hooch.  (What in the world can I use...moon...stars...sun...oh, God, be original...
...
...
...maybe it'll come to me later.)

And to top it all off, you have to strive to make the stuff up, but you don't want to reader to think about it.

Salome is up at Jersey Devil

The July issue of Jersey Devil has my story "Salome" in it.  (Link on the sidebar).  I've had too much caffeine and right now my mind is like Natalie Wood jumping around and singing "I Feel Pretty" in "West Side Story."  But it can't last and maybe later I'll be able to settle down and get some work done.

Happy July 4th

In most places July 4th is midsummer.   Here in Las Vegas we think of it more as the end of the beginning of summer.  We'll get some rain and then it will be hot and then school will start and then it will still be hot.  Not suprisingly, New Year's is more of a traditional Las Vegas fireworks holiday than July 4th.  Also, as many places do, we live under the even-more-traditional illegal fireworks hypocrisy.  In my county, you can't buy or use anything but sparklers and noisemakers.  In the next county over, you can buy anything you like but you can't set it off.*  I only ever buy sparklers but I'm quite happy to sit in a lawn chair and watch the neighbors' illegal fireworks.

When I was a kid the local paper printed a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence every year on July 4th.  (I suppose they still do it, I just don't read a physical paper anymore.)  Anyway, here is my version.  Turner Classic Movies will be showing "1776" tomorrow around 5 pm my time.  I haven't seen the movie, but I saw a stage production of it at Williamstown, MA one year.  This is from the 1997 Broadway revival.  Enjoy, and have a happy 4th:

Something for a lazy summer afternoon:

The Underground New York Public Library

I think my favorite is the 3 people reading My Family and Other Animals (a book my husband introduced me to years ago), Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and Borrower of the Night.  The other thing is, obviously, just the sheer variety of the people of NYC, all classes, ethnicities and religions, and the even greater variety of book titles.

Also notice the Subway Look, which you can generally catch on the faces of those who are not reading.  "I'm here, but I'm not here."  The Subway Look is actually pretty close to a state of meditation, when done right.

The Group

I've belonged to an SCBWI writer's group for almost two years now.  I joined eagerly, driven by a wish to talk to and know other writers.  I got more than I expected, in ways both good and bad.  Chit-chat with other writers over coffee? Delightful.  Listening to actual criticism of my sacred words?  Oh, yeah, that. 
It's been a learning curve.
For all the eagerness with which I joined, I had, and have, a dark secret -- deep-seated, competitive, seven-deadly-sin kind of envy of other writers.  Mean stuff.  Bad stuff.  Sitting still, listening to them, listening to their criticism (which was, I should point out, usually constructive) of my work, was and is an ordeal.  I'm a better person and a better writer for having done it, but I still sometimes have to force myself to bring work to the meetings. 
One of the saving graces of SCBWI is the fact that the groups include illustrators.  The artists in my group are fantanstic, and the fact that I didn't feel competitive towards them gave me some breathing room and just a tiny bit of a beginning in appreciating the other people in my group for who they were.  A lot of my more snobbish and childish beliefs have fallen by the wayside.
I'm a pretty faithful member, partly because I lead a fairly predictable life, and so in nearly two years I've witnessed some interesting aspects of the group dynamic.  There are, for instance, people who come regularly, for a month or two, bringing pieces of a novel with a good basic idea and multiple chapters planned, plotted and written.  Then one day they vanish and never return.  Months go by.  "Whatever happened to...?" "Do you ever hear from...?"  "Oh, she got busy and isn't doing much writing right now." Another member was always bringing in new projects and new ideas, and when we asked her about previous ones she would say, "oh, I'll get back to that eventually."  Eventually she left the group altogether and went into another genre.  (I later learned she had migrated over to us from another genre.)  A third, who had a really lovely Irish mythology story she was seeing through a first draft, got discouraged (I think) by an adverse critique at a conference.  Some encounters were even more fleeting, leaving me to wonder, did we do something wrong?  Were we not welcoming?  Or did it just come down to not being able to stand the scrutiny of outsiders?
The path to being a successful writer has many stages and maybe groups aren't for everyone.  I'm glad I have mine, though.