On Writing Anxiety and Reading Trash
I have decided to enter a fiction contest. Just a local one. Winner gets published and $75 dollars. It costs $10 to enter.
Oddly, I’m a wreck.
Okay, a wreck is stretching it. I am nervous. So nervous, in fact, that my stomach is churning. My head hurts. My fingers feel numb.
Pause. Sorry. Fast forward in time. It is an hour, a pill, and a beer later (I was interrupted) and I am calm, confident, and full of ideas.
Still, I fear that when I resume writing the story that I hope will win, or at least place, that this stomach wrenching, palm sweating, diarrhea provoking monster will creep up and attack me again. And even more frightful, I am scared that I might like it. This devilish, adrenaline-abusing muse.
I tried to explain this phenomenon to another writer friend and she laughed. “Isn’t writing supposed to be fun,” she chimed. “But, what about the tortured poet,” I asked. “The struggling artist-type.” She remained silent and I took this silence to be a concession. She recognized my genius. I pointed this out. She laughed again.
We’ll show her.
So, this story. It is one of those not-so-fictional fictional stories based on some of the experiences that I’ve expounded upon on this blog. Namely, my brush with postpartum psychosis. I am looking back at some of my earlier posts to remember what I felt and then creating my characters/plot/prose around that experience. I am hoping that as I write, the story will metamorphose into something more and more fantastical (or at least truly fictional) and something less like a memoir.
Either way, I’m willing to share the first skeletal bits of this up and coming masterpiece because I only have a few shoddy paragraphs. That’s right. I’m freaking out over just a few shoddy paragraphs. That’s not exactly true. I’ve started the started the story three different times. So, I actually have three sets of a few shoddy paragraphs. But don’t they always say that getting started is the hardest? We’ll here, I’ll let you see…
The Most Completed Set of a Few Paragraphs of the Story that I Hope Will Win a Prize
It was six weeks since the last rain and the garden was holding on by a thread. Still, I continued to water despite the water restrictions, despite the potential $400 fine or the neighbors’ dirty looks. And, I also continued to turn new earth, rubbing open old blisters and sowing seeds too late for planting. The garden had become both my obsession and my lifeline. It had become my only source of peace.
But, as goal driven as I was outside, I was equally indolent inside. The house, which, when I could manage a smile, I jokingly referred to as Amityville, was filled with piles of laundry, of old magazines and scattered paperbacks, of plates, and spoons, and sippy cups that needed washing. I would more often than not find myself staring aimlessly at the mess too overwhelmed, too limp to attack it. And the more I stood, the more I stared, the more the laundry, the papers, the dishes began to represent my personal failures.
That’s exactly when I would step back outside.
It had, even with the solace of the garden, become impossible to ignore my anxieties, my inability to cope with “normal” life. I could no longer hide the bouts of panic that left me unable to feel my arms, my legs. Or the fact that the making of a grocery list left me in a life-or-death-like struggle with indecisiveness.
And, even more dangerous, I could no longer deny that I had seen a child behind our clothes dryer.
A child that did not exist.
That’s the reason, while sunk among the surviving beans and tomato plants, I talked myself into taking the pills.
Here’s where my shoddy paragraphs end. I can’t figure out how to change the font in this program, so I am making this announcement.
Any comments will, most likely, be appreciated.
So, onto reading trash!
I just finished Charlaine Harris’s New York Times Best Selling trash novel Dead Until Dark. (Sorry Heather for this unflattering review. For those of you who would like to try the series, I have been told that the second novel far surpasses the first in both style and quality. I also did not like The Other Boleyn Girl which I also referred to as trash. But, now that I’ve read Dead Until Dark, I must admit that The Other Boleyn Girl isn’t quite trash. At least of the Harris caliber.)
So, yeah, I just finished it. And, I admit I gulped it up in a short couple of days. Still, and I’m going to give something away but I don’t think it will ruin the book for you, my opinion was solidified when Elvis returned from the dead as a mentally retarded vampire. Yes, I am not making that up. That’s what happened. And, the main character, who is supposed to be fairly attractive, still wears banana clips and scrunchies. I have short hair, so maybe I’m out of the loop. But, I thought banana clips and scrunchies went out a long time ago. But, since there is so mcuh focus on the main character being Lousiana blue collar maybe I’m the one who is out of fashion sense. (And yes, I’m being offensive and nit-picky.)
Okay, so I might read the second book. So what?
I’m definitely going to watch the True Blood series (based on the book). And, yes, since Twilight, which some readers refer to as trash, I am looking for another romantic vampire series to quench my thirst.
Does that make me lame?
July 17th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
you must have missed the part about each word i write bringing me misery, more misery than the one before it.
but, my comments on the story so far:
can i get more about the clandestine watering? do you do it at night? dixie cupfull by dixie cupfull when no one’s looking? or are you the dick with the overhead sprinklers on in at high noon?
also, can i get more about the seeds that were too late to sow here? what season are we in? what desperate vegetables are you hoping for?
what personal failures? maybe that’s not important. are you going to talk about the state of the actual house, i mean like the structure of it being ripped to shreds and then staring at you, menacing, like it might devour you? because i think that scenario really made the amityville comparison, but that’s probably because i haven’t seen it. i only have a conjecture of what it’s about. maybe not important.
no normal in quotation marks. which groceries were you having trouble deciding between?
do you have to say it’s a child that did not exist?
that said, i think you are creating quite a pleasing contradiction between the outside and the inside, space i mean, although maybe mental, too? don’t know. i’ve had a soft spot for writing about the earth ever since our mkr days. i think you do it well and this will really be a great story. it should be covered in dirt. it should be warm and slightly giving on the surface like an exactly ripe tomato that might rot if you don’t eat it today, or perhaps tomorrow covered in vinegar.
and i cringe everytime i see someone wearing a scrunchie.
July 26th, 2009 at 1:13 am
A brief recant about Dead Until Dark. I’ve been reminded by a friend that the novel was written in the early 90s– hence the banana clips. I actually checked the publication date for that reason, but am in some sort-of denial about how long ago the early 90s actually were. More on that later.
This same friend also made sure that I understood that the Elvis character is not mentally retarded but crazy. I misread it.
Just wanted to make that clear.
Em