I can’t wrap my brain around some things that are happening in the world. My refuge is to hide in a sticky messy bog of simmering anger. Even though I know it’s useless to try to hide. Insanity is everywhere.
To me, the sad thing is the incompetence, obliviousness, and cruelty (here’s looking at you, America) have repercussions for everyone and everything on the planet. I’ve said before the earth would be better off without humans, and I stand by that statement. The evidence speaks for itself, getting louder everyday. The world is on fire.
Here are the five words from Friday’s writer’s group:
Regurgitate
Constipation
Obstinacy
Cleanse
Between
Should I hold it all in or should I let it all out? I’m torn between the two. Looking at the empty page on my computer always makes me wish I hadn’t eaten those nachos. Regurgitating the ideas I’ve been incubating can be so satisfying at times, but it’s rarely a cleansing operation. The insipid words I’ve spewed all over the screen are almost always banal, trivial, inane… all the adjectives a hack writer doesn’t want to see when reading Amazon reviews of her latest novel.
On the other hand, holding it all in, like the chronically constipated residents of the nursing home I used to work for back when I thought a regular paycheck was essential (before I knew what happens when you give an obstinate 85-year-old too much Miralax), well, holding things in can cause its own set of challenges. Sometimes the best solution is to do neither. The creative muse often takes a hike. The liminal space between is the wellspring of curiosity, which is why I keep trying those nachos.
I find it endearing, amusing, what’s the right word, that almost all the writers in the group show up for the Five Words meetings and hardly any of them show up for the Writing Only meetings. If suppose if I lived far away, I probably wouldn’t attend every meeting. I have no geographical excuse. I can literally walk around one corner and down the street for five minutes and be at the library parking lot. I have no excuse for not going. So I go. And I write.
I get it. On the Five Words days, there’s no pressure. After we share our contributions, few people have outside work they want to read. I’ve been pondering what I will do when I run out of blogposts. I still have a few more weeks’ worth of entertainment. But eventually my inventory content will run dry, and then the pressure to write something new to read will ramp up. For the first time since I started attending, I might have to say those shameful words: “I got nothing.”
My deep fear is I might feel obligated to read a scene from my current writing project. Which is progressing, thanks for asking. Reading work in progress inspires anxiety.
Speaking of feedback, the leader of the writers pack invited the women writers in the group to join her in a new critique group. Red flags sprang up immediately upon reading her email. For one thing, a group of women? No way. A room of female energy is too hormonal. Second, critique? No way. I’m happy to review other peoples’ work, but they better keep their grimy opinions off mine. Third, the leader said she was stuck and needed some feedback on what to do. She was referring to character, plot, setting, etc. My opinion is if you have to ask a group about those things, you should just make the group your ghostwriters, because you have lost your voice.
Many years ago, I joined some friends in an Artists Way group. I was lost in indecision so I welcomed others’ input. Life is much easier when you delegate thinking to someone else (here’s looking at you, America). Plus, I got a certain level of satisfaction at hearing myself read and hearing others praise what I wrote. Immature, I know. I had no sense of self back then. I didn’t find my own voice until I was in my forties, and even then my voice was riddled with the paradoxical malady of self-doubt and self-seeking.
Can I say my writing has changed since then? Sure, I can say whatever I want. It’s my blog. I believe after my ill-fated foray into academia, my creative writing has improved somewhat since the early 1990s. It’s still all about me, though.