Category: Essay

Advice Paralysis

Essay / Writing

How’s your writing going? How’s your quarantine going? How are you doing today? 

I finally identified my current writing problem. Instruction fatigue that leads to paralysis. I’m editing a novel as I try to write more poetry. I’m using search and replace to search and destroy insidious words. Good advice I read somewhere. Normally, I would embrace what I can use, discard the rest. I enjoy helpful advice. 

Usually.

Since all the writers are stuck at home, advice is gushing out to blogs and writing sites like water from a fire hose. Everyone has the time to advise right now. “Write All The Things!” Advice flies at me every time I open my email or browse to my favorite sites. At first, it seemed good. I gulped the gushing water. Then I tried to apply it to my own work. That’s when I choked. Contradictions rattled in my brain. Do this, not that. Do that, not this. Write, no, write more. Wear a mask. Wear two masks. Wrap duct tape around your face and wear a welding shield. Don’t touch your face. Don’t touch anything. Don’t breathe, it’s safer. But despite that, write. 

Tons of articles appeared on how to use this stay at home time to your advantage, most of them exhorting you to not waste time and get that Great American Novel (or Poem) in the works. Sort of NaNoWriMo, the Pandemic Version. It can guilt-trip people frozen in place by everyday fears—money, food, rent, worry about loved ones. The numbered “C” that has replaced the Big C. Getting through the day seems more important than getting Sylvia out of the murder house and on the run for her life. 

It’s a dystopian novel that sprung to life. Kudos to those who can keep plugging on despite the looming end of the world as we know it. (Too much?) I struggle to do any real editing of my novel, other than nit-picky stuff—eradicating weasel words like “that” and “would”. My poetry has undertones of despair. Even a poem about a flower ends with its death. I’m afraid to edit previous work because of this. I’m trying to pull up my bootstraps and accept writing isn’t coming from a happy place right now.

I don’t want to journal. Meditating is not the answer to all problems. Hurtling an asteroid into Earth seems like a good place to end a sci-fi novel.

Must Not Give In To Annihilating Humanity. 

Find inspiration where you can. Don’t worry if you can’t. 

That’s all I’ve got right now. I venture out the door to my “essential” (sacrificial) job with the public that leaves me fearful I’ve caught coronavirus every time I leave at five. That I’ve brought it home to my family. Writing needs to be a safe space. Not swallowing the fire hose of advice is now refuge from my tendency to beat myself up over not producing more, since I’m stuck in the house when I’m not at work. 

Advice is a sign of the times. It’s a cozy blanket fort offered up as salve to our burning fears. It wants to distract us from the underlying terror that something bad is going to happen and we’re helpless to stop it. I like to be in control of my world and damn it, the world is spinning out of control. I’m embracing the paralysis by easing away from social media and the news. I’m baking bread. Writing ideas in a notebook with my favorite pen. Petting the dog. Reading everything I can get my hands on. Paralysis retreats inch by inch. By the weekend, I’m ready to write again and send my plaintive “How are you doing today?” out into the world once more. 

The Pandemic Avoider’s Guide to Caution

Essay

I started out smug. Coronavirus can’t get me, I don’t associate with people all that much. My faithful muse smacked me on the back of the head. Fool, said she.

I’m not as introverted as I think. 

Being in the high risk group makes me very cautious. Even my other half worries about bringing something home. But there is another problem. Besides having no baseball to distract me. 

I work with the public. And the higher-ups show no sign of letting us do much work by phone or Internet. A lot can be done that way. We have hand sanitizer on desks and by phones. We’re as careful as we can be, but wiping down computers and phones and desks with Clorox does nothing about the people that come in sniffling and sneezing. We hand them masks. They hand us paperwork from their germy hands. I’m tempted to spray it down with Lysol, but doing it in front of them is a bridge I haven’t crossed. Yet. Pens, packages, the door handles. I wash my hands once an hour. Is that enough? More soap? Lye?

My other half goes to the grocery store for us. Wiping down the cart handles is fine, but what about the can someone took off the shelf and then put back? Things that are exchanged and replaced? Will flour ever be back in stock? How many meals can one make with hamburger? This is the time hoarding tendencies come in handy. Plenty of food in the freezer, art supplies, and yarn to knit. But limited TP and hand sanitizer. Rinsing hands in vodka seems excessive. At the moment. Better put to use with orange juice.

Everything that can be closed, is closed. I get gas with gloves on. The gym is closed now. I’m hoping stretches and dumbbells at home will do for the time being. My dog is too old to walk, but my neighborhood is empty for me to roam the road. We walkers wave at each other from opposite sides of the street. Advantages of living out of town.

How much avoidance is acceptable? How much further does an introvert have to go to be safe? Is there no safe place? Probably not. Unless you want to disconnect entirely from the public and live like a hermit. Even then, if your groceries get delivered, who handled them? There’s no winning. I’ve gone with sanitizer, wipes, and avoiding gatherings, but even introverts need human contact more than they think. On the plus side, I have lots of time to edit the novel, read, and create new poetry. 

All we can do is our best. Don’t let the possibilities overwhelm you. Watch Netflix or Prime or the Weather Channel. (Highway Thru Hell is my guilty pleasure.) Quit picking your nose. Try not to run screaming when someone around you coughs. Take precautions, but don’t wear a HazMat suit. Yet. Introvert, but don’t let it consume you.

In the words of Sergeant Phil Esterhaus, “Let’s be careful out there.”

Why I Don’t Write Political Poetry

Essay
Arguing sheep

Sometimes I think too much. That is my main excuse for not writing political poetry. I’m an after thinker. I’m non-confrontational. By the time I’ve absorbed the daily news cycle and thought about its background and implications, weeks have passed. 

I’m not timely.  

In today’s fast-moving poetic world some people can write a poem on the current news by the end of the day. I envy that. Of course, some are well versed in politics and can fire out opinions with a brain full of background on the issue. As a sporadic reader of news, I can’t make the leap between today’s story and one that came out two weeks ago. It all seems the same to me. Dumpster fires, train wrecks, and slow-motion car crashes abound, cleverly disguised as news.

The current hype of the day is easily missed when you don’t watch television or get the daily paper. 

Read All About It.

I scan headlines, maybe read the first paragraph. I get the gist that way if the writer is any good at all. How do you turn gist into a poem? Maybe a mashup of gists in one rage-fueled epic?

Continual outrage is tiring. Reading the news makes me outraged. Politics as usual, makes me outraged. I can’t write on a diet of calculated fury. Some poets can channel their wrath into biting poems addressing the issue of the day. 

I don’t think I received that poetry gene. 

Maybe it’s because poetry is my safe space to explore more leisurely issues. To wax philosophical about things of importance to me. To hide in my blanket fort. 

With the way things are going today, I want to come out of my shell and sling some of the smoldering indignation into a poem. But I’m not sure how. Snarling and gnashed teeth poetry is not my favorite and I can’t see writing it. I leave that to those who are good at it, and there are some very good poets out there demanding we look at the issues. With the way things are going today, I need to express my discomfort and fears. Poetry is the vehicle for that. 

Learning to Spew

What am I afraid of? Spilling my guts in a blood-soaked mess on the page. But maybe, just maybe, I need to confront my writing (writhing) nest of guts. Scribble it out. There is no poetry police. I don’t have to show my work to anyone if I don’t want to. 

So I have a notebook just for gut spilling. Politics. Things that piss me off to the point of apoplexy. Sentences with more four-letter words than a sentence can carry. And you know what? It’s a good feeling to put the pen to paper and spew. Sometimes in magic marker. I highly recommend it. 

You probably won’t see many, if any political poems from me. Don’t think I don’t care. I care too much. My notebook knows all about it. For those of you that tackle political poetry, kudos. I’ll be reading. 

Do you write political poetry? How do you handle the red hot topics? If you don’t write it, do you want to? Should we be tacking it to telephone poles on hot pink paper?

BAM! KAPOW! SPLATT! THWACK!

Essay

(Thank you, 60’s Batman, for the onomatopoeia.)

Why does the answer to everything seem to be violence?

Books, movies, real life. Blood, gore, guns. Maybe I’m too much a wuss for this. I don’t believe every problem needs to be solved by punching, shooting, blowing up, or some form of superhero power liberally applied. 

It’s inescapable. In my first fantasy novel, I gave one of the heroes a sword. He refused to use it again after seeing the aftermath of his warmongering. He gave it away. In my new WIP, one of the protagonists refuses to carry a gun, although almost everyone in his world does. He knows his refusal will not change a damn thing but it aligns with his values.  Which probably align with mine, since every character, at its core, is me or evil me or pissed off me or head in the sand me.

The Folly of Youth

When I was younger and in the Army as an engineer, I took great glee in blowing up things like bridges, tossing hand grenades with abandon, and shooting my rifle at targets, never connecting that if I went to war, I would be required to apply these methods to people.

Then I learned to use words. Words are molasses poured over the violence urge, or gasoline tossed on the pyre. Used judiciously they support and defend. Used viciously, they flay. I do believe they have power over the sword if only to blunt the edge. Unfortunately, people are moving away from the written word, the spoken word, the lovingly crafted word toward a society of shouty words and half-baked memes standing in for a thoughtful conversation.

That’s a shame. 

All you poets and writers keep on doing what you do. Society needs you now, more than ever. Fight the good fight. Maybe it’s your words that will change the world for the better, or at least plant a seed. 

Back to Top