I did not write 1700 words a day last week. I'm panicking and I have no
excuse. Maybe I could whine and say that life got in the way, but I
won't; I learned a couple of things.
Writer's block is rare with
me, coming as the wind when it listeth, confusing and confounding me so
much that this time I decided to blame my voice recognition program and
reviewed the entire tutorial. That exercise neither taught me anything
new nor added words to my NaNoWriMo score. Also, it didn't get A Murder of Crones, my new novel, written.
However,
I browsed the Internet and accomplished a very important thing in my
efforts not to write. In Wikipedia I looked up a word I found in Tim
Ferris's book, The 4-Hour Workweek. The word
is "dysphoria", and it means the exact opposite of "euphoria."
Wikipedia's article on the subject references a long series of
personality dysfunctions which I can use in A Murder of Crones.
My antihero, you see, has a borderline personality disorder; he is not
quite antisocial, he just wants to kill his father. Now I have a new
insight into his deranged mentality. Thank you, Wiki.
I did
another productive thing in order to avoid writing: I watched three
movies in a row dealing with the end of the world. The first one was
the best: Volcano. That sucker destroys West
Los Angeles and includes at least two wrenching subplots; it does it
skillfully, without confusing the audience. You'd better believe I'll
find a good excuse to watch that movie again.
There's a theory
that says writer's block comes to us when we are unsure that we're about
to do something the entire world awaits with breathless anticipation;
in other words, writer's block is really a result of hubris. Well: my
husband was an actor so humble about his craft that during his years as a
beginner his catch phrase was "be ready to fail." He later appeared in
over 150 movies and television shows. Samuel Beckett wrote, "Fail.
Fail again. Fail better." and Beckett won the Nobel Prize for
literature.
I'm going to try that. It might not work at first, but it probably will if I fail enough times.
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