It Looks Like I’m Writing, So Maybe I’m Writing
I’m trying to get my head into a book. My book. An unfinished book that I’ve been trying to complete the writing of for several months. (If I say it that way, it sounds better than saying “I’ve been trying to finish it since last year.” That could mean anything from 3 to 15 months.)
This is what I learned growing up: everything depends on the words you use when you confess to something. I advanced to studying this technique from politicians when I was old enough to realize they were all lying, but what they said sounded reasonable. I’ve seen this carried to bizarre lengths just recently in my personal life. The words sound reasonable but what there is of truth in them is minuscule.
Part of the problem when I open up the word document I’m working on, is that I get very sleepy. It’s almost as if my dog, Sugar, is staring at me with that unblinking gaze of hers. I know she’s trying to get me to think of cheese or chicken when she does that. Then I’ll go get some to eat, and I’ll share with her. There’s nothing very convoluted about her schemes. I don’t know what the laptop screen wants of me. Maybe my typing is ticklish.
The title of my book is Deep Down I’m Shallow. At this point in our history, it’s like being pregnant; I have labor pains, heartburn, I get cravings for sardines dipped in ranch dressing at the most inopportune times, like when I start to write, and I even have a stretch mark on one finger.
I need to get the book done before people notice it’s now in the gestational time period of a baby elephant. I do NOT want to give birth to a Gone With the Wind, either book-wise, or baby-wise. GWTW is a long book.
I’ve made another start on it. I tore it apart and reassembled it with a different perspective. I was motivated by David Sedaris. That’s how I study writing; I don’t take classes, I read other people’s books. Dave Barry is one of my favorite mentors. He doesn’t know he is, so please keep it on the down low.
It pays to read blurbs. I was reading a blurb on a David Sedaris book and it said that Sedaris had won the Thurber Prize for one of his books. I had never heard of that contest, so I read up on it and decided to enter my book in it. If a writer wants to enter a book in the Thurber contest they have to- get this- actually have a book written.
Then it has to be published sometime during the year before it’s entered. Conceivably, I have until December 31 to get it done.
But things- all kinds of things- distract me from writing. I used to love typing on the computer keyboard. How much simpler it is than using a typewriter like we used to do in the last century and on which I constantly made mistakes, had to back up the roller, white out the error, blow on the white out to dry it, and then type over the spot with the correct letter. What a first world problem it was.
Whited out errors on the papers I typed in high school looked just like a man who shaves with a bad blade and has little pieces of TP all over his face to staunch the bleeding. But at least I had only the typewriter and paper to focus on. There weren’t twenty other little windows in front of me to peek into and get distracted. I know I could close all those tabs on my screen, but for some reason, it feels like turning the television off while I work. And I haven’t done that since 1987.
Because I can’t resist peeking now and then outside my focus into those windows, I see things like the below. How can you ignore such news as this?
I’ve been listening to a summary of Anthony Trollope’s life from Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey. He said Anthony Trollope wrote 67 novels during his 47 years. No, it was 47 novels during his 67 years. And he worked for the post office during this time. If we subtract twenty years until he got started writing and working, presumably at the age of twenty, that leaves one book a year he wrote. That’s kind of impressive.
I’m retired and can’t seem to get this second book done, the one that will set the world on fire. (It’s really my third, but who’s counting?)
If Trollope could do it, I guess I can, too. He didn’t have the Internet and television, though to distract him. He didn’t suffer like I do. I’ll bet he never wrote about writing just to put it off, either.
