In which I resist the urge to quote Blues Traveler

[bodlon]

So I’ve been feeling blocked lately. It’s a funny thing to say at the end of a month in which I’ve written and sent out both a short screenplay (to NYC Midnight) and posted a short story (for Yuletide), but it’s true.

A fair bit of it is stress and depression. I’m wiped out by the overculture’s noisy Christmas juggernaut (can’t we just have Doctor Who and be done with it?), and the chemicals that run things in my skull have been askew for months. I feel exhausted and fragile at the drop of a pin, and it’s such a crushing blow when that happens that it leaves me just completely inert. Oh, and I still haven’t settled into anything even remotely resembling a schedule now that I’ve started waking up later.

When the idea of simply going to bed or doing basic self-care is enough to provoke anxiety, something has gone terribly wrong. And really, when the thing that’s gone wrong is just the way I’m wired, digging my way out of that is a difficult operation at best. Especially when it’s not something I can really talk about day to day. My usual cheery response to “How are you?” — “I’m not dead yet!” — has been in the sort of earnest that originated it a decade or so ago. Some moments — some whole days — are an exercise in reminding myself to take a breath, and then another, and then another.

If you’ve lived with depression and anxiety, you understand this. If you haven’t, it’s really hard to communicate and probably sounds ridiculous. Instead of belaboring the point, I’m just going to ask that you trust that I know my mind reasonably well after 30 years of living in it, and ask that you refrain from dropping me comments about how sorry you are that I’m feeling down. That’s really not the way this works.

Anyway. Moving on.

The fact is, I want to be writing. Few things dial back the crazy like putting on the emotional headphones and rocking out to what my characters are experiencing.

(And yes, that’s almost exactly what it feels like, and why it’s so disruptive to be disturbed when I’m deep in thought.)

Problem is — well, one of the problems– is I’ve got all this energy to spend on making words and stories, but I’m feeling increasingly boxed in and tripped up about what I can write. I’ve talked myself into this strange little corner about what is and isn’t okay to write. And one of the biggest, nastiest, most marked out in the not-okay pile is writing about myself.

Obviously, I don’t mean that literally. I’ve spent about 400 words so far talking about myself here alone. What I do mean, though, is that if I want to write about a character who is trans, queer, pagan, asthmatic, single, depressed, or one or more of a whole constellation of things I also happen to be, there’s this knee-jerk reaction to take it off the menu.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out what’s so terrifying about this.

Am I afraid of seeming self-interested? Of solipsism? Of writing something semi-autobiographical? Of trying to advance my own politics? Of being pigeonholed? Is this some horrible, novel way of my subconscious manifesting some of my less pleasant core beliefs about myself? Is this the thing that makes me self-conscious about going to the gym deciding to diversify? Am I afraid I will write something that my friends will see and suddenly know too much?

My brain, people.

~*~

- So if you’re interested, I’ve started a blog about exploring/playing with/talking about my spiritual practice. I’ll link to it now and again if I think it’s something interesting enough to share broadly, but otherwise you may want to assume that what happens in Vegas on Raxacoricofallapatorius over there just sort of happens over there.

- This story about Michel Foucault and C. Wright Mills is the best thing I’ve read in at least a week. If you’ve got five minutes, a sense of humor, are willing to overlook the matter of timelines (both Mills and Foucault died before the era of blogging and texting, for example), and ever took a Sociology, Social Theory, or Philosophy class, check it out.

- Rape survivor with pacemaker-like device arrested for refusing TSA screening.

- Open call for submissions for a YA anthology about LGBTQ teens and their allies confronting homo/bi/transphobia. Deadline is Feb 28.

- Somewhat more vague open call for submissions for a trans-themed literary fiction anthology. No deadline given, but there’s an e-mail address for inquiries.

- Why Mizzou hasn’t played Iowa in 100 years. This is one of those stories that people don’t tell around here. It should be.

- Biden thinks national consensus on same-sex marriage is inevitable. For the record, so do I. It’s nice to see the Veep chiming in on this on Good Morning America of all places.

- Some Google employees defect, rebel. Justified paranoia in 3…2…1…

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

Comments

[pocketmouse]

It's funny. I have the same worries about writing about myself accidentally, and it halts me too, a lot. And yet I could easily come up with a half-dozen arguments for you why you should write anyway. And if I tried to apply them to myself, I'd just shoot them all down. So I don't know how helpful any suggestions I have might be.

But write anyways. Because it makes you feel good. Because even if you start with your own motivation, as the character evolves, you'll find ways they're different from you, and you can either go back and remove more traces of yourself as the character evolves, or you've just found things you and the character have in common. And probably have in common with a good portion of your audience. Or is something that you want your audience to understand, so it should stay, regardless of its source. And hell, half of literary analysis is critics assuming that every character represents the author anyway. And maybe sometimes it's a specific thing you're trying to work past, and once you've worked it out enough, it'll be easier to write other things, but until you do write it, you're just going to stay stuck there.

And hey, it's never stopped privileged white dudes from writing about other privileged white dudes. So.

Write anything. Write everything. Because the only person you really have to please with your writing is yourself. Everyone else is just cake.

[bodlon]

I want to print this and tape this to you the next time you have a similar funk. We can pass it back and forth! Like gum!

Wait. No. Er.

I'm actually embarking on Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" thing starting tomorrow. I will either get crazier or more awesome.

Actually, these things may not be mutually exclusive.

[pocketmouse]

*Gnaws on comment a little*

My money's on both.

[bodlon]

So you're the one leaving bite-marks all over my journal!

It's probably because it tastes of bacon, isn't it.

[pocketmouse]

*takes icon out of mouth nonchalantly*

There is that possibility, yes.