ON NOT WRITING

Neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night keep me from writing when I'm supposed to. No, oh no, I'm much more creative with my reasons for failure.

It starts out with a subtle cue of self doubt, a feeling of "what if I just... [anything else]" to avoid the feeling of inadequacy. So I indulge. I put it off. Small increments at first, and then longer and longer. I can write next hour. That'll be okay, right?

No. Will not.

The feeling of disgust at not writing is the perfect fertilizer, urging that self doubt into a unholy vegetable of man-eating, night-dissolving proportions as it feeds upon itself. And then it's 6 AM again and no progress has been made except for sullen drudgery of avoidance, disillusionment and general feelings of unworthiness. I can either stay up until noon and foul up the following day, or I can accept the failure for what it is.

Anything else can include... well... pretty much anything. I've watched movies, listened to music, read a sizable portion of Wikipedia. Reddit, games, email, you name it. I can recite numbers up through novemdecillions without any hesitation. I can tell you why the average phallus length of an aardvark is not available online. I have learned all sorts of things, useful and otherwise. I've sat and refreshed a browser, not going anywhere. At least when I cave in and read extra books, I can tell myself I'm doing something useful.

Slowly, however, doing things I like(or things from which I could conceivably derive neurotic satisfaction) no longer helps me escape. When writing works, it's such a rush, and most things I've listed there are--let's face it--boring. Mind killingly so. If it's not engaging, it's not a good escape, especially because when writing works, it's makes you feel like your mind is on fire, like electric throbbing through your entire body. If you'll overlook the double entendre.

Since such quasi-enjoyable pursuits are used up, I turn to things I dislike as a penance. I read the news. I make food. I read Youtube comments. I watch infomercials. I write and rewrite a sentence or two. I mentally claw and scratch at anything I've written. I reread old emails that have a special place of scalding in my heart. And then I sit and feel truly abominable.

And little by little I become so consumed with loathing that it's a bitterest mercy when the night draws to an end and the brainless morning birds begin singing... at which point the impending completion inevitably drives me into a frenzy of half-assed writing that I'll have to re-edit the following day.

Some of the biggest precursors to the failfests that occur every few weeks are:

• Too little sleep (I drool on my keyboard when i pass out on it. Apart from the drool spatters seeming vaguely modern art, it's not very effective... unless you want yet another 430 pages of "kkkkkkkkkkkk" inserted into the middle of a project from where my nose was pressed.)

• Too much sleep (I often get more creative as my mind decays into sleep deprivation. Too awake is good for planning, but not for delivery. Must run balance.)

• Games (FPS are the worst. The less creativity, the more issues they cause. Story driven is okay, except for the time sink angle.)

• Online waste (Obviously. Dear goodness the productivity increase when my Wifi is out...)

• Vacations (Terrible news. Never more than one day off from writing at a time, ideally, if that. Doesn't have to be the full 2k daily words, but at least 500.)

• Not writing (Sounds stupid, but it's true. Writing even the literary equivalent of feces still gets it flowing. Writing nothing just makes everything turn to stone)

• Guilt (Deadlines are good and lovely. Beating yourself up for failing them is fine. Feeling guilty about failing them long after the fact is pretty self-defeating.)

• Food (I don't like eating, but not eating does terrible things for the mind and body. Until I bypass the maudlin mastery of mortality, eating is a bit necessary and too often shirked.)

• Feeling out of shape (makes self loathing and self disgust so much easier.)

The weird thing is (while wasting my time on researching it) I started noticing how entirely consistent the problems are among writers. Which is a little depressing in and of itself, since it indicates there is no cure. That being said, doing the obvious responses to the precursors does seem to have some effect. So maybe I should try that on nights like these instead of writing self-indulgent blog posts.

But, as tonight has been a more or less complete waste and I'm chock full of bitterness I'm out to go burn a CVS down--er... pick up my wife from the city. Sorry, my inner Baltimorean is showing. I can at least hope this blog entry will guilt trip me into writing tomorrow.