Writing is HARD!

WRITING IS HARD!

I guess if writing were easy, everyone would do it. Sometimes it is. The 'flow' happens and one can muse magically for hours. Even long minutes are noted and appreciated. Then there are the serious parts, the ones laden with emotion, or poignant memory, that stick us on stuck. Stuck. Stuck Stuck!

I've read so many books on how others do it, that my head swirls with the do's, the don'ts, and the never's. Along with the always', the should's, and the maybe's...that the keys are within, the words come down, not to be pulled up, as Julia Cameron eloquently elaborates...

She's right. Of course. The words are there. Just not when I ask them to be. They come in the middle of the night – causing me to fumble in darkness to scribble what I won't decipher in the mornings light. They come while I'm driving, causing me to swerve over to the side of a barren road to make a quick jot, that I will not remember the context of when I go to transcribe it into my book. I carry a little notebook for when someone says something, or I see something, or read something that urges me to make a note, because that, that right there and then sounds so good! Watching television, I hear all the right phrases spoken or think of just the right segue for where I'm stuck. Worst is while I'm exercising or walking...the best, brightest ideas flow like syrup in perfect sweetness and sanity, only to be quickly vanished when I finally make it home to notate my minds brilliance.

If you're a writer too, then this is all familiar and frustrating for you as well. Trying too hard, trying to say it all just right, and on command, at a specified time or interval, trying to hone the craft while keeping grammar and structure on target – well, it's all too much. Because writing is hard.

It's not supposed to be perfect, I know. The 're-writing' is where the real work is. The original is just a draft. The trouble is the draft is full of holes, like the draft of air that's puffing through the room right now, but not directly at me, where it should be, in the intensity of a southern summer heat.

A big project, like a book, stays on one's mind constantly. Through sleep, through chores, through grocery lines, through conversations, through every thought about everything. It's maddening! Maybe it gets easier by book number 200? I don't know – I'll have to ask Nora Roberts about that one.

Or maybe the attendant on the psyche ward I end up on will have a pre-printed handout on this very subject. With wide enough margins for me to make notes, of course. The diagnosis will be simply stated - “Writers Block. Mandatory Medication”.

Just Another Lori Story.

O.C.D. - Obsessive Confirmation Disorder

O.C.D. - OBSESSIVE CONFIRMATION DISORDER

I know...I know. You thought it meant 'obsessive compulsive disorder'. Perhaps in some cases, that is true, but for me, it's a confirmation concern.

When did all this confirming become necessary? All you doctors and appointment people and technicians and agencies and teachers and random appointments and yes, even you friends that think it necessary to confirm every pre-appointed appointment, STOP IT! Stop it right now! Especially annoying, over the top convulsively bothersome is the confirmation call to confirm the confirmation! Even the term “phone tag” is enough to create an explosive mental miasma sending me immediately into an urgent need for chocolate or an unscheduled and unnecessary food binge or other distraction such as deleting you from my callback schedule for at least a year.

Let's methodically run through this to see if I understand the dilemma of modern time...

I call a dentist, for example. I make an appointment. I notate the appointment on my calendar. The appointment I made, and dental assistant agreed to. It was I that initiated the appointment in the first place. Then, at a duly inconvenient time, sometime before the scheduled appointment, someone in the dental office calls me to remind me of an appointment that I originally asked for. And now, would I please call and confirm that I received this confirmation? WHAT? Are you people conspiratorially crazy? Or, are you just joshing me? And NO, I will not call you to confirm that I confirmed an appointment with you in the first place.

What's going on in this world? We don't talk to each other – we text. We don't know how to have real conversations, but we know how to confirm confirmations? All day long, everywhere, people are calling to check and recheck that they are checked for a check-in. You just know the space aliens are avoiding us for none other than this very reason. They would never be able to confirm a precise landing in a place so indecisively scheduled.

When I was growing up, somewhere between caveman times and modern mayhem, we had phones (only available in the color black, thank you) with long twirling cords that attached to walls! We didn't have caller ID. We didn't avoid the phone. We raced, and beat each other up to answer a phone ringing. And we actually talked. (Some of us, endlessly – even under bedsheets with flashlights). And oddly, we showed up for our appointments without any notification at all. The 'confirmation call' did not exist.

Flash forward to today – our phones are attached to us...somewhere! In our pockets, our purses, it's right there, on us! Yet, we do not answer a ringing phone anymore. We fear actual human voice and having to actually respond. Hence, the need later to confirm the confirm.

What's the alternative? Well, you could be like my cousin who bought a nice, shiny, new calendar, and when I flipped it open to snoop – well, it was notably empty. Nada. Nothing written anywhere. The intention to record dates and appointments apparently replaced by the much appreciated, yeah, you guessed it, confirm call. A lot of people like that they never have to be responsible to remember anything anymore, that someone will call to remind them what they are doing and when. The trouble is, I'm caught up in that dismal and dumb loop, and I operate differently. I'm different, that's for sure.

How am I supposed to take any call seriously? As soon as I hear, “This is Dr. So and So, I delete. Because I do not need a confirm. So if Dr. So and So is actually calling to tell me I am dying, I will die without knowing and apparently without confirming my own death. Because if you don't all stop calling me to confirm what I already know, then I'm confirming that my obit will read: She died of an overwhelming attempt to confirm the ludicrousness of Obsessive Confirmation Disorder. Confirmed.

Just Another Lori Story