The Pains and Pleasures of Rituals
A look at the ways I’ve tricked myself into writing (or not)
I can’t write for shit. I don’t mean that the things I do write are bad but that, as a practice, I am horrible at this. Writing agonizes me in a way that, if I passed Kafka on the street, we’d high-five in recognition of each other’s inabilities, then we’d both continue to not write. Sometimes I sit at this device and it feels like I am wringing sweat from a rag. Drips and drops, if anything at all. It can be awful. Waiting for nothing, hoping for something. Anything.
To counteract this foolishly voluntary pain I do everything possible to surround the act with various ornaments, dress it up. I have created a series of routines and rituals which at best create the ideal environment for me to do something that can often feel like torture but at worst makes writing impossible because I won’t allow myself to work without everything being “just so”. By taking the pressure off of myself and placing it onto outside influences, I’m not holding myself accountable, and that can be a problem.
I wrote before about a counting ritual I used to perform as kid in what may well be an undiagnosed case of something related to arithmomania; similar customs have crept their way into my writing life as a way of making me feel better (or perhaps giving me…
