Friday, June 24, 2016

Dysphoric Displeasure

Writing at the speed of a snail has been the reality of late and the ideas have not been popping as usual I find myself in need of respite. I have things to do and I have things to say yet all I seem to be able to accomplish is manipulation of the remote control and the aimless ventures in the land of Social Media.

What I really have is to tell the truth and admit that what is wrong with me is that I have things to write.

I do not have so many things to do that it should negate my personal method of communication. I do not have, considering that I am retired and live alone, all that much to say. I have ennui, lethargy, and languor invading my existence and all I have to say about that is;

ENOUGH!!!!!

I watched a well-known writer on a talk show talk about the thing he would suggest to aspiring writers. He thought that they should be bored. Not have anything going on, or anything to do, or anything to feel. I thought this absurd and was almost ready to dismiss it as folly. Until I remembered what it was that made me become a writer. I cannot leave anything alone. I cannot see or read or hear anything that does not trigger some riposte. I cannot keep my big mouth (or fingers) shut!
Now what is it that I have to say? What is it that is going to come bubbling up from inside me that will satisfy that need, that yearning, that obsession?

IT IS EVERYTHING!!!

It is the Sit-in by the Democrats in Congress that was most certainly a publicity stunt. God Bless them for doing it! It is all the Anti Trump memes on my Social Media accounts because they are terrible drudgery due to the sheer numbers while being totally necessary. We need protection from lunatics and the election process in America is not providing it. It is a report on a Sports show about an award winning gymnast and athlete, born with no legs,  that watched another athlete and was inspired to become as accomplished as her heroine. Then finding out that the heroine was her biological sister.

It is halfway through writing a book about free standing self-driving cars and seeing one of your ideas in a commercial. One that you did not know existed when you got the idea for the story. It is having two blogs and posting on another just because you can. It is about having that story…that story that is inside you and writing it just because it is inside you and needs to be on paper.

I was in a store a couple of months ago and somehow got engaged in a conversation with a gentleman in the frozen food section. He got asked what I do. I told him that I am a writer. Now the first thing most people might ask a writer is whether they might have read some of their work. This guy asks me when I got my last royalty check. I published a story in an anthology about four years ago that sends me a 1/27th royalty portion (their words not mine) once a year. The checks average about $3.27. At the time of the conversation while shopping for sugar free ice pops I had just received one of these checks. So I told the guy that it had been a couple of days to which he proclaimed that I was, indeed, a writer. It was an amazing revelation that at the age of sixty two years I was officially dubbed a writer even though I wrote my first short story in 1963. It is now a mark of distinction in my life that a few million words later I can now confidently proclaim to the cosmos’

I AM A WRITER!!!!

Having that as a banner to carry it is particularly displeasing to discover that the boredom that NY Times bestselling author champions is not a place where I find any particular gratification. I want to be typing faster than normal because the story has bubbled to the surface and the magma within the meditation of inspiration has erupted and is spewing out everywhere. Boredom is boring!

So my answer to all this discontent is to focus that suggested monotony and give it away. Give it to whoever is reading this and move on to what is not boring. That would be a work in progress that is a mess because of my absence. Back to that guy building and testing a car that can fly who is about to get drunk and get in his flying car and wake up on the moon.