Puking Cheap Drama

Gather enough cheap drama and puke it on the page. This has been my approach to living the writer's life for the last 30 years. To give myself credibility, I fully committed myself to living intensely with as many people as possible. Then I'd understand myself and others and really write some juicy stuff. Tomorrow I will write the way I want.

But I have to write. It just has to come out. I gathered all of these memories, bits of dialog, threads of stories and kept them in my head. I was waiting until I was ready. But stuff would slip out. I wasted some of my most inspired material in long conversations with people who didn't get it. I created a test. If my friends and family didn't think I was funny, clever, etc. Why would strangers?

When they wouldn't get it, I would use this evidence to reinforce my frightened story. Since I wasn't writing stuff down, I started writing a story in my head about not writing. It was a long and elaborate tale, a story that had neither a beginning nor an end.

For example, I told myself that I didn't write anything down because I didn't want to waste it, a writer's version of pre-ejaculation. Tomorrow I will write.

I believed it was arrogant to think that I had something to say in my 20's. Who am I to think I know anything? In this drama, I'm unworthy, worthless. Tomorrow I will write.

The reverse was also true. I also thought I had to be recognized as the best at whatever I am doing. So, I usually didn't do what I really wanted to do. When I tried, the fear gripped me. I just couldn't deal with being a mediocre writer. It would kill me. What if I really can't write? What if God gave me passion to do something and then I sucked at it? I'll write tomorrow.

Enough. I could spend the next 50 years working with my fear and never write a word that really meant something to me.

The thought occurred to me, maybe if I could write fiction, I wouldn't have to create such an intense life. I could just make it up and not go through all of the exhaustion of actually living the whole thing. Maybe I could stop writing this awfully boring story about my writing career that was going to being tomorrow.

On Saturday morning, I will be attending a writer's workshop for beginning fiction. Even though I know I can make up a story about not writing, I don't know if I can create a story that does not revolve around me. Tomorrow will soon be today.

I'm writing this blog to empty my mind. Maybe God has something else to say. I want to find out. My plan is to be a new student. I'm gonna be a 2nd grader. I plan to show up the way my friend the 2nd grade teacher tells his class every morning, "Sharpen your pencils and use the bathroom so we can get to work."