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.
