Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Chapter 50: A Guilty Writer

One thing you have to understand about anorexic people is that when they eat they feel unfathomably guilty. If you haven't been there then you cannot imagine. Have I been anorexic? No, but I was around it a LOT for a few years. Three people very close to me at one time were suffering from it. But this post isn't about anorexic people. I'm so sick of that subject. 
This is about guilt. A guilt that one cannot even think of until it's gripping you and pulling you under the icy waters. Guilt is a place I live often. That suffocating, confusing place. Yes, confusing. You don't know what to do because so many choices just make the condition worse. So in order to avoid more guilt and aggravating the condition, you do nothing. Which brings on more guilt. 
"What have you done? Killed a pet?" you may be asking. No, sweet friend. That would be too easy to admit to. My crime is self pleasure. 
Get your mind out of the gutter.
I don't like doing things that make me happy. Thank God dance practice has a foot in both fields: pleasure and need. I dance for income. I must stay in shape. I love music and moving to it. I dance. But even that isn't pleasure 100% of the time. I just am not allowed to do things that make me happy. Who says so? Ummm, well, me? I guess. 
There is not answer really except "me". I'm sure I've touched on this topic before but now I want to address something I felt very keenly today. I did almost all this weeks worth of homework over the weekend (yikes, that was painful) so that way I would have some time today to do anything I wanted. I scrawled on my calendar, "Get tambourine, play piano, write. Have fun!" What a load of shark bait. I could never do that. The only reason I am writing now is because my dear little sister got sick of me whining and put me in front of my computer and said, "Write!". I promised LFL that I would finish a rough draft this Summer. Didn't happen.
Because I have writer's guilt! 
What is this new word? It's when you take time (whether you have worked hard to make that time or not) to write and play with your work and decide, "No, I cannot do that. I must do something worth my time." 
"WHAT?" I can hear my heroin screaming at me. "You promised me by July my story would be told." I shrug and say, "I had other things to do... I don't know what, but I just did."
She's heart broken and I feel guilty for not writing her story. On the other hand though, I felt guilty every time I sat down to write. "Do something else. Study French. Work on something. Clean your room." Blah-blah-blah! The things you can do aside from write like you want to never ends! If I write, I am wasting time. "But you said you'd finish it by the end of July?" you ask. "How is that wasting time? You want to be a writer don't you?"
Yes, I don't know, and yes. 
Why is something I want to do a waist of time? Why? Because it gives me pleasure. Where did this mind set come from? My dad? My mum? The way I was raised? Or is it just some freak genetic gene? Or is it that writing NOW will not pay off until 5 or 6 years down the road? Am I so wrapped up in instant gratification that I cannot even give my stories a chance? What about Glenn? My faithful, brave Glenn. My first Hero. Don't he and his king dragon, Armongar, deserve a chance to fly? I freakin' made a map and a language up for that story. It had histories (a little too much I think sometimes... I'm not exactly Robert Jordan or Tolkien), people, creatures, and a myriad of stories to be told. 
I blamed writer's block for the longest time. "I don't know what to write!" Liar. I have pages and pages of outlines for LFL and DG. I may not be feeling inspired to write but that's why they call it a draft, right? I have no excuse but my mysterious guilt. And it must must MUST be dealt with. My stories may not be worth anything in the world, may never bear fruit, may never bring me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it... but I need them and (forgive my arrogance) they need to be told. If you have never seriously written, then you cannot understand the life a character can have. The presence. I was on a writer's message board once and no one else on there saw their characters the way I did. (Am I creeping you out yet? Heehee!) 
I don't know if I have a talent for writing or making stories. All I know is that they are the one thing in my life that I feel like I can hold up and say, "Look what I did! Isn't it awesome?" I just love them. All of them. My sci-fi novel, my gangster book (may be a disaster!), my fantasy trilogy, my vampire mysteries, my few but loved short stories. Why the guilt? I'm no psychologist so this is up to you guys. But to day I am struggling against that guilt and going to write on LFL even if it's the ugliest, stupidest, most wretchedly written "chapter 8 draft" ever! 
Thank you!     














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