Betwixt Angst and Comfortably Numb

This thing, not a feeling yet not just a thought, has been running through me like an underground spring, trying to well to the surface. It - whatever it is - has been lurking in my academic life, as well as my writing life. And my personal, too.

It goes something like this: sometimes we feel lousy. Not just a bad hair day kind of lousy, but the kind of nasty where we want to scream, hit people, curl into a tight ball on the floor of a dark closet, cut ourselves with exacto blades, play with long coils of rope, lose ourselves in the comfort of gambling, food, booze, or sex. The dark, dark emotions that dog us like stubborn shadows. And we want them to go away. Now. Because stewing in this maelstrom of negative emotion/feeling/angst/insanity makes us extremely uncomfortable.

But there are pills, you see. Some you can get from your family doc, others you can easily score from a college roomie, a dealer loitering in the Lexington Market parking lot, or a friend's medicine cabinet.

And the question is: do you take the pill?

Fascinating article and discussion on this delicate balance, courtesy of Judith Warner

Existential Angst

What goes up must come down, and my high plummeted, much like the temperature here in wacky weather Baltimore.

It was that second agent rejection that screwed my joy to the wall with eight-inch daggers. Once again, a very pleasant, personalized note with some nice compliments ('intriguing query', 'well-written'). Frankly, this love letter didn't faze me for a couple of days. But then I took that note and the rejection I received Christmas Eve and read them the way I scrutinize tea leaves or tarot cards or short, stubby life lines marching across a palm. Seeking answers. Looking for the 'why'. Because, you see, those agent rejections have code words and phrases, and they can be deciphered. And this is what the morse code tapped out: THIS STORY DOES NOT HAVE THAT NECESSARY ELUSIVE SPARK.

An editor, a rather well-known one who happens to teach the class I'm taking on putting a novel proposal together, confirmed my 'ah-ha'. As did two trusted beta readers, which pretty much paralyzed me. All week. I had me a hoe-down of a pity party. I wallowed in the miserable muck of existential depression, that deepest melancholy when the entire meaning of your existence hinges on your ability to create beauty and meaning.

At the end of three days, I decided to give up on BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, convinced of the impossibility of plumbing further into my characters' - and my own - psyches. 'Time to move on, kiddo!' I told myself at three in morning. 'Think of it as your practice novel, the one that sits in a dusty trunk waiting for grandchildren to find.' And, worse, I wondered if I was a hack, a wannabe writer, someone forever ill-equipped to tackle important issues with a sacrament of words.

I still wonder...

But like most dark moods, this one passed. The quill called, a pensive siren, and I got bored with my negative, self-imposed drama and decided to not worry about whether this story, which I love SO much, will ever see the light of publication. I decided to let it rest. Marinate for a bit, stew in its juices of emotion and character and words. I know what needs to be done: my characters' voices need to sing off the page, brushing off all vestiges of my pixil strokes. THAT is what the agents and my readers are saying. Dig deep, even deeper than I can imagine, and with soul.

It's the how I am pondering...

So, for now, BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT slumbers. But Ben and Phoebe are persistent folks, so I expect our mutual holiday will be short-lived. And I continue to write - how can I not? This morning, in the dusk of dawn, I penned 670 new words on a blank page, starting story number 3 - LOVE STORY ON THE INNER LOOP: A Novel - inspired by a 'what if' that initially sprouted as a six-sentence ditty.

As Dory, the addled fish in Finding Nemo, sings: keep on writing, writing, writing.

Peace, Linda

PSSSSSSTTTTTTT... and remember: YOU CAN'T RUSH ART.

Trusting the Process

The final chunk. Almost seventy pages. I stare at the freshly printed hard-copy before me, feeling like a miniature meat-processing plant: feed, grow, produce, harvest, slice, dice, package, market. From cow to Oscar Mayer weenies. Is a book really any different?

Coffee in my left hand, blue gel fine point in my right, I start at the top. In an hour, I read through the entire shebang. Cobalt ink underlines every other word, notes scrawl in the margins: awk*, XX**, awf***, chu****. My mood matches the color of my manuscript.

Panic blooms, granules of yeast in warm, sugary water. My pulse pounds – boom, boom, boom – my internal grandfather clock reminding me of my self-imposed deadline. A month. Just a month. I can’t do it, can’t finish, there’s too much to explicate and extricate and excise and revise and devise… the voices are wrong, the rhetoric weak, the writing... well, the writing’s the least of my worries.

I rise from the kitchen table, nuke my now tepid coffee, and shove four caramel Hershey kisses into my mouth without tasting them. The micro bleats once, then twice, and I tear myself from the bowl of chocolates. Deep breath. My laptop mocks me, but I pull up the document, begin to edit. My brain seizes. A voice whispers in my ear. “This story sucks. You suck.” The little demon who sits on my right shoulder leers at me, then laughs an eerie cackle

And I believe him (of course it’s a him).

So I walk away and walk around in a murky funk. I snap at my children, my husband, the stupid drivers, the stupider pedestrians. I am despicable. I am the Ugly Writer. But after almost 48 hours of doing nothing but wandering in a sleepless, irritable haze, my mood begins to lift.

I return to the merciless document, and begin. The writing flows. To my surprise, my insomniacal angst has miraculously spawned new scenes, better-behaved characters, pithy and compelling dialogue, even decent prose. Optimism stirs. I plow through the first chapter. The fiend stretches, yawns. “Yeah, yeah, you can do it.” I can do it. And I have done it before. Three weeks ago. Duh. Deja vu. Maybe I should trust my mind? Myself?

*awk = Awkward
**XX = Add something, anything – this hole’s as wide as the damn Mississippi
***awf = Awful. AWFUL!!!!!
****Chu = Chuck. As in chuck it in the can, the toilet, the ocean, the gas grill


This just in from Neuroscience: Dirt is better than Prozac. Yep. Ingestion of Mycobacterium vaccae, which exists naturally in soil, produces serotonin - and bliss - in mice.


Guess I’ll go snort some dirt... Peace, Linda
writing


Mouse Brain on Dirt