Tonight's Poet Corner: Introspection
Ladies and gentleman - my very small group of loyal readers - I have a problem.
No, it's not one of the multitude of issues and conflicts I've addressed in previous introspections or blog entries. It is not about my financial status, my education's future, or my family dynamics. It isn't even about my occasional bouts of creative ennui. It is, in fact, the opposite.
What I've implied, perhaps incorrectly, over the years in my introspections is that my writer's block is mostly a result of not having good enough ideas or not knowing how to get from point A to point B in a plot, outline, or script. While that sounds like a valid reason for a hindrance in writing, it is only responsible about ten to fifteen percent of the time when I cannot seem to get anything on paper or screen. The truth is, the other eighty-five to ninety percent of the time, I am so bloated with ideas that I can almost feel them leaking out of both ears. I have novel ideas, series ideas, script ideas, sketch ideas, even comic ideas, all bouncing around hard enough to almost bruise the inner curves of my cranium. I have so many ideas ranging from local stories to memoir-esque recordings to LGBTQ+-focused storytelling that I essentially do not know how to give them the proper justice in actual text.
Let me be clear that having such an inundation of "Ooh! How about...?" going on in my head does not necessarily slow me down in my writing all the time. Obviously, in the past, when I have devoted myself to a singular project, I have stuck with it long enough to not only write it all, but also write it all quickly. I've mentioned several times that The Sequined Door took me eight days to write and that [Insert Self-Discovery Here] took exactly thirty days (the month of November for NaNoWriMo). My miniseries Happy Distribution also took approximately a month or two months, and writing each day was pretty consistent in terms of that particular project. Also, poems are easy for me to pound out when I draw out multiple ideas because I can never leave a poem unfinished; it just makes me feel uncomfortable like I've only finished reading half a chapter of a book when I really should just read the whole thing. With many other, longer projects, I have no choice but to leave the computer once in a while to, you know, eat, sleep, work, and commit to rudimentary anatomical and physiological functions like a typical human being.
But sometimes the swelling mass of ideas in my noggin makes it difficult for me to concentrate on one solitary activity, and as a result, it shuts me down somewhat and leaves me with several unfinished projects such as my untitled TV series and my third novel and my sci-fi trilogy, the latter of which which I haven't touched in almost a month. And considering the fact that I have been spending more time in the kitchen, experimenting with food and seasonings and cooking in general, I find it best to describe such an experience with a making dinner analogy.
Imagine, if you will, that you are preparing a basic salad for simple nom-noms, and your primary goal is to make a salad dressing. That is the very first step in your culinary process. You get a flask out, you start pouring the olive oil and the vinegar, you squeeze in a little Dijon mustard, and then you get to thinking about spices. You turn toward the garlic and salt and notice the other array of seasonings you have at bay, and all of a sudden you're thinking, "God, wouldn't this chermoula work great with fish?"
And you suddenly have this enormous hankering for catfish and you know you have to run to the grocery store to get some so you can fry those bastards with some chermoula and herb seasoning and all that good stuff. So you head to the grocery store for the fish, and as you saunter toward the seafood counter, you pass the baking section, and you think, "You know what? Maybe I should do fish later. I should bake a giant cake and have cake for dinner because I'm an adult and no one can stop me!"
So you grab sugar and flour and cocoa powder and stuff for frosting, and you dump it all into your shopping cart, and you start heading toward the check-out lines when, lo and behold, you see a display for, I don't know, chicken. Let's go with chicken. And you think, "No. Not cake. Chicken fajitas. I'll make chicken fajitas and maybe cake later, and the fish will be for tomorrow, and this is so awesome, I'm just brimming with so many amazing plans for cooking and baking and what-not!" And as you're scrambling to make some semblance of a meal before seven o'clock, when your sister and your girlfriend come home from the gym, the poor unfinished salad dressing is sitting in its bottle on the counter, just olive oil and vinegar and a little bit of mustard, and you're left with nothing but the bare bones of what could have been a really great and straightforward dinner because you were too caught up with every single other idea that ultimately also remains woefully incomplete.
That is essentially what it is like to have so many ideas and not enough energy or time to jot them all down fully. Now, to some people, this may sound like procrastination, or almost like an attention deficit on my part, but make no mistake that these ideas never leave my mind. It's just all a matter of, shall we say, keeping them fresh and relevant and interesting to me. It is very difficult for me to carry out the threads of a story when either something external challenges the story or I start self-imposing restrictions on my writing. When I start becoming bored with an idea or getting worried about the technicalities (Am I catering to harmful tropes? Am I being respectful of other cultures or creeds? Does the plot make sense? Are the characters well-developed? Is there anything here that could be seen as crude or vulgar or offensive or flat or boring or non-relatable or cheap or silly or illogical or guuuuuuh it huuuurts heeeeelp?), the whole she-bang, no matter what caliber it is, goes stale or dry or whatever sort of food-esque adjective you want to slap onto its flank. The point is, I have so many unfinished projects not exactly because I don't have the energy to write them, but because enough stuff gets in the way that I have time to come up with a brand spanking new, "What if...?" and completely abandon whatever I was working on previously.
I actually find some catharsis from putting up past stories or novels that I didn't complete because I do understand that some things aren't meant to be given an ending. Caramel Kisses, which I will probably be done posting in about two weeks because that's where it all stops, is one such example. Caramel Kisses was the story of a young college student's attempt to come to terms with her sexuality, and its descendant, The Liffey is Half-Asleep, is clearly superior in technique, cohesiveness, and story. However, I'm not going to lob an, "Oh, well, maybe I was never meant to finish it" mentality at some of this other stuff because that's a cheap excuse not to finish anything, and I know I can dig up the motivation necessary to continue writing these other projects. I know I can do something with The Rosa Diaries, or with The Authoritarian Auction, or any of these other ideas screaming to be put onto paper or onto a blank document file on my computer. I also know it is not necessarily a bad thing to go from project to project and add a little this or that to each because maybe, over time, the process will result in something full and complete.
I want to be able to cook that fish, make those chicken fajitas, and bake that cake. Sometimes, however, I wish I could just carry out the basic task of making the goddamn salad dressing.
Because homemade salad dressing and a successfully written story are both fucking awesome.
Writer's Quotation of the Night:
Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right.
No, it's not one of the multitude of issues and conflicts I've addressed in previous introspections or blog entries. It is not about my financial status, my education's future, or my family dynamics. It isn't even about my occasional bouts of creative ennui. It is, in fact, the opposite.
What I've implied, perhaps incorrectly, over the years in my introspections is that my writer's block is mostly a result of not having good enough ideas or not knowing how to get from point A to point B in a plot, outline, or script. While that sounds like a valid reason for a hindrance in writing, it is only responsible about ten to fifteen percent of the time when I cannot seem to get anything on paper or screen. The truth is, the other eighty-five to ninety percent of the time, I am so bloated with ideas that I can almost feel them leaking out of both ears. I have novel ideas, series ideas, script ideas, sketch ideas, even comic ideas, all bouncing around hard enough to almost bruise the inner curves of my cranium. I have so many ideas ranging from local stories to memoir-esque recordings to LGBTQ+-focused storytelling that I essentially do not know how to give them the proper justice in actual text.
Let me be clear that having such an inundation of "Ooh! How about...?" going on in my head does not necessarily slow me down in my writing all the time. Obviously, in the past, when I have devoted myself to a singular project, I have stuck with it long enough to not only write it all, but also write it all quickly. I've mentioned several times that The Sequined Door took me eight days to write and that [Insert Self-Discovery Here] took exactly thirty days (the month of November for NaNoWriMo). My miniseries Happy Distribution also took approximately a month or two months, and writing each day was pretty consistent in terms of that particular project. Also, poems are easy for me to pound out when I draw out multiple ideas because I can never leave a poem unfinished; it just makes me feel uncomfortable like I've only finished reading half a chapter of a book when I really should just read the whole thing. With many other, longer projects, I have no choice but to leave the computer once in a while to, you know, eat, sleep, work, and commit to rudimentary anatomical and physiological functions like a typical human being.
But sometimes the swelling mass of ideas in my noggin makes it difficult for me to concentrate on one solitary activity, and as a result, it shuts me down somewhat and leaves me with several unfinished projects such as my untitled TV series and my third novel and my sci-fi trilogy, the latter of which which I haven't touched in almost a month. And considering the fact that I have been spending more time in the kitchen, experimenting with food and seasonings and cooking in general, I find it best to describe such an experience with a making dinner analogy.
Imagine, if you will, that you are preparing a basic salad for simple nom-noms, and your primary goal is to make a salad dressing. That is the very first step in your culinary process. You get a flask out, you start pouring the olive oil and the vinegar, you squeeze in a little Dijon mustard, and then you get to thinking about spices. You turn toward the garlic and salt and notice the other array of seasonings you have at bay, and all of a sudden you're thinking, "God, wouldn't this chermoula work great with fish?"
And you suddenly have this enormous hankering for catfish and you know you have to run to the grocery store to get some so you can fry those bastards with some chermoula and herb seasoning and all that good stuff. So you head to the grocery store for the fish, and as you saunter toward the seafood counter, you pass the baking section, and you think, "You know what? Maybe I should do fish later. I should bake a giant cake and have cake for dinner because I'm an adult and no one can stop me!"
So you grab sugar and flour and cocoa powder and stuff for frosting, and you dump it all into your shopping cart, and you start heading toward the check-out lines when, lo and behold, you see a display for, I don't know, chicken. Let's go with chicken. And you think, "No. Not cake. Chicken fajitas. I'll make chicken fajitas and maybe cake later, and the fish will be for tomorrow, and this is so awesome, I'm just brimming with so many amazing plans for cooking and baking and what-not!" And as you're scrambling to make some semblance of a meal before seven o'clock, when your sister and your girlfriend come home from the gym, the poor unfinished salad dressing is sitting in its bottle on the counter, just olive oil and vinegar and a little bit of mustard, and you're left with nothing but the bare bones of what could have been a really great and straightforward dinner because you were too caught up with every single other idea that ultimately also remains woefully incomplete.
That is essentially what it is like to have so many ideas and not enough energy or time to jot them all down fully. Now, to some people, this may sound like procrastination, or almost like an attention deficit on my part, but make no mistake that these ideas never leave my mind. It's just all a matter of, shall we say, keeping them fresh and relevant and interesting to me. It is very difficult for me to carry out the threads of a story when either something external challenges the story or I start self-imposing restrictions on my writing. When I start becoming bored with an idea or getting worried about the technicalities (Am I catering to harmful tropes? Am I being respectful of other cultures or creeds? Does the plot make sense? Are the characters well-developed? Is there anything here that could be seen as crude or vulgar or offensive or flat or boring or non-relatable or cheap or silly or illogical or guuuuuuh it huuuurts heeeeelp?), the whole she-bang, no matter what caliber it is, goes stale or dry or whatever sort of food-esque adjective you want to slap onto its flank. The point is, I have so many unfinished projects not exactly because I don't have the energy to write them, but because enough stuff gets in the way that I have time to come up with a brand spanking new, "What if...?" and completely abandon whatever I was working on previously.
I actually find some catharsis from putting up past stories or novels that I didn't complete because I do understand that some things aren't meant to be given an ending. Caramel Kisses, which I will probably be done posting in about two weeks because that's where it all stops, is one such example. Caramel Kisses was the story of a young college student's attempt to come to terms with her sexuality, and its descendant, The Liffey is Half-Asleep, is clearly superior in technique, cohesiveness, and story. However, I'm not going to lob an, "Oh, well, maybe I was never meant to finish it" mentality at some of this other stuff because that's a cheap excuse not to finish anything, and I know I can dig up the motivation necessary to continue writing these other projects. I know I can do something with The Rosa Diaries, or with The Authoritarian Auction, or any of these other ideas screaming to be put onto paper or onto a blank document file on my computer. I also know it is not necessarily a bad thing to go from project to project and add a little this or that to each because maybe, over time, the process will result in something full and complete.
I want to be able to cook that fish, make those chicken fajitas, and bake that cake. Sometimes, however, I wish I could just carry out the basic task of making the goddamn salad dressing.
Because homemade salad dressing and a successfully written story are both fucking awesome.
Writer's Quotation of the Night:
Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right.
- Amy Joy
Have a great night and a great weekend, everyone.
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