As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve not written much lately. I failed miserably during this year’s NaNoWriMo. I didn’t crack 10K words, total, including notes and gibberish. The one BG book I have been trying to finish? Isn’t finishing. It won’t finish itself either and every time I try to get it going, I feel like I am drowning in words going nowhere. Then there’s Simple Sarah. I’m diligently editing it but those who have read the first version, hate the new version. But those who don’t know the first version, love it. Damn in ya do, damn if ya don’t.
Good on-line friend Georgeanna Hancock over at A Writer’s Edge has a post that perhaps I will take to heart. Wonderfully titled “Writer’s Block of Garbage“, it is oh so apropos for me right now.
Some folks experience a variation of Writer’s Block in which they can’t write anything worthwhile. No, really. Instead of being stuck at nothing, they’re rooted to the groove of writing, well, garbage. You know you’re stuck in this rut when you start on a story, writing several pages, only to discover it goes nowhere. The characters are flat. Dialog doesn’t sparkle. You have no story. Or you’ve written an article, let it rest a while, and come back to find it’s just not as good as previous ones. You’re moving in the wrong direction with your writing development. And the harder you try, the worse it gets.
She then gives three suggestions to cracking the cycle. But you’ll have to go to her site to read those suggestions.
I’m getting more in the mood each day and have found myself thinking of my stories at random moments. I got some ham radio books for Christmas and as I read the beginning of one, I kept drifting off toward Nikki, the BG character who is a ham radio operator. I kept thinking of how she could use it in the story. Then I started thinking of young reader’s book where the lead character is a ham radio operator. This is all good things! Things I’ve not really done in a while.
Now it is confession time. I’ve been on anti-depressants for at least 10 years. Back in April, I accidentally broke my habit of diligently medicating myself. All of my meds were being taken sporadically but I tried to take my blood pressure and low-thyroid medication. As a result, I’ve been off my anti-depressants since, basically, mid May. And in late September, the fog lifted.
The medications had been keeping me level, more or less. They helped me to not get into a funk where I wallow in self-pity, self-hatred, and some other stuff. But they also kept other emotions muffled, too. I was constantly having to play a game called “Identify That Emotion!” to determine how I was feeling, how I was reacting and acting.
With the drugs out of my system, I have no trouble identifying emotions! They are all right there, raw, naked, alive and in my head. At times, it is almost overwhelming. I cry during some TV commercials. I get so damn angry.
The other effect to this is that with all these new emotions, feelings, desires, thoughts, rawness, my creative self was shoved into a corner of my brain where it wouldn’t get tangled up in the rest of the mess.
Now that I have a better handle on things, I think, my creative self feels safe to come out and play again. It will be interesting to see how my writing has changed. I’m sure it has. It’s not being muffled or censored.