Procrastination Games

Sometimes, when I can't break a writing block, I...

• Watch those evil-looking ass crows that gather around the cans on garbage day and imagine their conversations.
• Imagine that those same crows are watching my evil ass, imagining my thoughts.
• Sit for hours in front of the keyboard, looking at that blank Word screen, having amazing thoughts that I cannot put into language.
• Have better conversations with characters not yet assigned to a story while I'm trying to wake up the characters in a story I am working on.
• Wish, wish, wish I had an appointment or other obligation to attend to because, for some reason, I work better under irritation and pressure.
• Have mental arguments with God about His having given me this urge to create without giving me ways to just snap my fingers and get the job done.
• Paint my toenails with several coats of polish because that gives me a reason not to get in my favorite cross-legged position to write.
• Compare writer's block to physical ailments like constipation. 
• Realize that writer's block is a constipation of the mind and spirit.
• Wish Ex-lax made a product to unplug my mind. In the sense of relief, not disconnect.
• Compare writing to the very last moment of a pregnancy that just will not end.
• Get all wrapped up in thoughts about the 'pregnancy', pushing and willing the thing I'm creating to just be out of me.
• Lay on the bed and make elaborate plans for re-doing my room decor.
• Realize I can't afford to re-do my room decor.
• Lay on my bed and imagine that my first published novel will be such a hit that I'll be able to afford having someone else do my room decor.
• Realize that, with enough money, I wouldn't be in this room anymore.
• Remind myself that I write, not to have more money, but just to breathe.
• Make a list of books that I've read that were so awful that I know my worst written story has a chance. If I just get off my ass and get it written.
• Realize that those awful book authors were stronger than me in spirit, if not talent. They did get their awful book finished. 
• Write dedication pages in my head (and not on paper or screen because I can't write shit when I'm blocked).
• Force myself to sit very still and try to get 'centered, then realize I don't believe in 'centering' myself as much as stirring myself up. The process of meditating or 'getting centered' usually just makes me drowsy.
• Write these silly blog posts because I know that writing anything is better than writing nothing.
• Think about the hours and hours I've put into the story that is stuck in neutral and wonder if I should just delete-delete-delete it into oblivion.
• Decide to just let the damn story sit in the corner as punishment for putting me through this hell.
• Think that I am such a loser because I can't do this writing thing that I cannot imagine living without.
• Beat myself up until my ego is slinking off to sulk in the corner along with the story I sent there.

Mostly, I do anything except write. It's a non-cycle.

Too much to ask for?
(via getgln)

Peace

--Free

Don't Like and Do Love. A List.

The Don't Likes:

• Automatic doors that hesitate so long that I almost run into them.
• When I'm too stupid to realize the automatic door is 'slower' than I am.
• Well-dressed people who ruin the look with a bad attitude. 
• The mean thoughts I have about those people, like hoping they trip and fall while I'm watching. 
• Parents who let their bad-assed kids loose on the public, and then act as if you were the one who advised them not to teach the little monsters how to behave.
• Other shoppers who hog the aisles with their carts, then get pissed if you bump into it while trying to pass.
• Shoppers who pretend to be deaf and blind when you are trying to pass them in an aisle.
• Adults who never use the words/phrases "Thank you", "Excuse me", "Please", "Hello', "Sir" and "Ma'am".
• Children who aren't being taught the above words/phrases.
• Men who don't hold doors for women. 
• People who find the above statement sexist or anti-feminist.
• Drive-through coffee service when I can't just request cream to add for myself.
• Weak coffee.
• Coffee so strong that an entire bottle of creamer won't mellow it out.
• Men who wait for a woman to make the first move.
• Women who scared men out of making the first move.
• People who think a man holding a door for a woman is a 'statement' of some kind.
• Sloppy kisses. Unless it's from a dog.
• Kissing a dog. Of any kind.
• Not being able to cancel obligations at the last minute without appearing rude.
• Cancelling obligations at the last minute.
• Fake apologies.
• Making fake apologies.
• Morning breath so bad that hazard lights ought to start flashing with your first words.
• Mistaking someone's long, thoughtful stare for flirting.
• Flirting with someone you only thought was flirting with you.
• Getting halfway through a manuscript before you decide to change a character's name.
• Seeing descriptions on social media that could mean anything.
• Not understanding exactly what it means to be a "brand specialist" or "life optimizer".
• Having someone who lives in the shadows and stalks your online profile.
• Wondering if that person is masturbating to your profile pic.
• Trying to take a cute-but-not-whorish-looking profile pic.
• Trying to look attractive, serious, intelligent, fun and un-posed in a profile pic.
• Trying not to capture glass-cleaner streaks or runs when you take that bathroom mirror selfie.
• Getting stuck in a check-out line behind a person who bought everything that needs a price-check or that they have a coupon for.
• Not having one of the coupons for the same thing you have in your own basket.
• Having hair that only behaves the way you want when you aren't going to be seen by one damn person you care about.
• Not feeling well and not being able to explain why.
• Drinking coffee on the patio and swallowing something that could have been a lump of powder cream or the baby spider you saw earlier.
• Not being able to find that baby spider anywhere near where he was before.
• Not being able to make yourself throw up the coffee.
• Thinking about that nasty, unidentified lump every time you drink something for the next week.
• When I visit my toddler nephew and he's so busy playing that he pays me no attention at all.
• Having nothing to write with or on when you have an idea for a story.
• Damn near hurting yourself to get to pen and paper and forgetting the idea you had.
• When the idea you had really sucks snot once you get it written down.
• Writing what is possibly the most eloquent thing ever to leak from your brain only to read it over and think, "Meh."
• When you're so broke you can't pay attention.
• Finding a great sale on a product you've been wanting at the time you're brokest.
• Being broke. Period.
• When you've re-arranged all your bills so that you have lights, food and gas, and then reading news about someone who bought diamond-encrusted nail polish.
• Knowing that, if you could, you might also splurge on diamond-encrusted nail polish.
• Spending forty bucks on something frivolous to cheer yourself out of the blues, then realizing you forgot a bill that's due.
• Returning that frivolous thing so you can pay your bill.
• Realizing that you don't really miss the frivolous thing you returned.
• Buying a lipstick that looks so good  in the store only to realize, once you get home, that it makes you look a little scary.
• Doing the same thing with an outfit, only the outfit makes you look scarier. Or desperate, or cheap, or, maybe, just sad.
• Realizing you can't wear the same cute clothes at fifty-something that you did at twenty-something - or even at forty-something.
• Realizing that maybe you should never have worn some of the clothes you did.
• Wishing you had a "significant other" only because you want someone to have sex with, and you're too good for one-night stands.
• Wanting to have sex and having no one to have it with.
• Wondering if that last item was grammatically... what?
• The term "significant other". 
• Wondering if that term makes you the insignificant one.
• Kissing with no sex.

The Loves:

• Kissing with no sex.
• Having really pleasant conversations with someone you'll probably never ever see again.
• A whole day to do whatever you want.
• Knowing what it is I want to do for a whole day.
• Watching a comedian that makes me laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
• When I visit family and my toddler nephew runs screaming for the door the minute he hears my voice.
• That big, nasty chocolate-and-slobber kiss I get on my ear from my nephew.
• Having a really cute stranger flirt with me, even if I'm never going to see him again and there was no chance that, if I did, anything would come of the flirting.
• Waking up too fast because I think it's a Monday when, really, it's Sunday and I can go right back to sleep.
• Making a CD of that one really good song so I can play it on loop and dance like a maniac if I want to.
• Dancing like a maniac to that one really good song.
• That first perfect cup of coffee first thing in the morning.
• Any cup of coffee first thing in the morning.
• When I wake up with breath so fresh that I wish I had someone to roll over and kiss without throwing their body into shock.
• That one special guy friend I can talk to about any and every thing.
• That one special guy friend who makes me feel beautiful and isn't going to ever (say he wants to) sleep with me.
• Reading a book so good that I adopt the characters as imaginary friends for the rest of my life.
• Writers who write so well that I swear I can hear them telling the story inside my own head.
• Falling in love with the characters I write about.
• Remembering something about a loved one that makes me break into a big smile.
• Knowing that there is a person out there who is going to meet me and make me fall as in love with them as they will be with me.
• Hope.
• Dreams.
• Goals.
• Beating the odds.
• Being here.
• Being me.
• Having so many more "Loves" that I will have to continue this at another time.

Peace

--Free

On Writing and Writer's Block

For the past few weeks, I've been neglecting everything else while I work on my latest story. I love writing - or, at least, I love creating characters and plots. The writing part is pure slavery.

At this very moment, I am having writer's block. Every one who write's fiction knows that writer's block is usually due not to having nothing to say but having too much to say with no clue how to say it all. I think I just proved my point.

So what do I do when I have these moments? Waste time on line, of course.

My relatives just might have it right

Ha. I feel better already.

I also sit on my personal pity pot and think too much about things that have nothing to do with what I'm working on. For instance, has it occurred to the other writers with social media networks how insanely cruel people can be? If you're not spending at least three hours a day interacting online with people, they stop  visiting your blog or throwing any encouraging words your way. I swear, I've heard from just one person this week (out of the 4000 or so contacts I have). Really, people? I am over here trying to create worlds out of mere words. The least you could do is stop in every now and then to say hello...

That frustrates me. So I waste a little more time on line.

Doing what I really do instead of what I want to do.

There are tons of this crap out there.

Another thing I like to do when 'blocked' is take vacations to a fantasy world where this damn book is finished, published and on every best-seller list out there.Which is exactly what's never going to happen if I keep Googling for stuff like this:

Because it matters

~sigh~

If I get too caught up in my feelings of misery, I look for encouragement:

"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit." (Richard Bach)

Or for company:

"The music lets me see the story but the story doesn't let me write the words." (Elizabeth J. Kolodziej)

Speak on it, sister!

#truth is a bitch

I smiled when I found this quote:

"Writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all." (Charles Bukowski)

Mission accomplished.

I feel a little better now than I did when I started this post. I'm still 'blocked' but I can get on with the business of breaking through.

Peace
--Free