Inadequate

Hey, it's been awhile since I did a woe-is-me post! How about we break that trend?

I've been feeling pretty down lately, cheery Facebook and Twitter posts notwithstanding. You could call it post-NaNoWriMo slump, and I suppose that's part of it, but not merely because of the change of pace. The truth is, my story was much smaller and less meaningful than I hoped it would be. Less mystery. Less complexity. Not much more than ordinary people in a slightly less than ordinary setting. Simple, fairly predictable. All right, I guess, in its own way, but nothing like my original vision and certainly no Great American Novel.

Which is pretty much always how these things turn out. And I end up feeling rather like someone who sets out to create a symphony, only to find themselves unable to compose anything more than a predictable little single line melody. Depressing, especially when you know enough to appreciate and admire the complexity and texture and richness of something deeper, but can't summon any of that into your own head.

Sometimes I feel like a poseur in the writing and blogging world in general. For one thing, it seems like writing, at least in today's world, primarily belongs to people who come from appalling-but-colorful circumstances, or to people you might call the elite: well educated, well traveled, highly experienced. People who have had the time and money to volunteer in remote locations, or to travel to historic sites all over the world, to brush elbows with the best and brightest in a variety of fields--or who are, in fact, among the best in brightest in their fields.

On the other hand, people from lower middle class but stable backgrounds, shabby but never quite destitute; people without college degrees or exotic experiences; people who settled into dull jobs at a rather young age and who have never had time or money for anything more exciting than splurging on a CD or a new pair of shoes or a trip to the beach now and again: these are not writer material, at least not unless they are geniuses or "edgy" or are extroverts with incredible drive and originality. Or so it seems sometimes.

So I haven't felt much like blogging or working on finishing my story, because it feels rather pointless. And yet, writing may be what I'm best at (which is not at all the same as saying I'm good at it), and I feel a bit lost when it isn't part of my days.

I suppose the secret is to accept one's limitations and work within them. Paint with the palette you have at your disposal instead of packing it all away for want of better materials. If you can only write simple little slightly-formulaic stories about more or less ordinary folk, make them the very best simple little slightly-formulaic stories about more or less ordinary folk you are capable of writing.

But it's hard sometimes not to get so bound up in frustration and envy that you tie your own hands until you are incapable of creating anything at all.

Bleargh

I'm not doing NaNo this year, for a variety of reasons.  But this is the first time in a very, very long time I've not taken part, and I miss it.  I feel...itchy, somehow. It's like...some beautifully apt simile I would come up with if I wasn't completely lacking in words of any kind.  I want to write *something*.  I'd write at least a short story if I could.  But my words are all gone.

I miss most the physical act: scribbling away with a pen or pencil or banging on the typewriter and seeing and feeling the pages fill up.  But I got nothing.  I can't even seem to manage poems lately.  I have one single line rattling around in the hollow void of my noggin, but it doesn't tie to anything at all, AND it's about a sunset, which is terribly hackneyed as poetic subjects go.

I've tried free-writing, just writing anything and everything that pops into my head or writing about writing, and even that petered out.

And now I'm writing about writing about writing.  I make me cry.

At least there's turkey in my near future!  And I don't seem to be having the same issues with music.  So there's that.

Update Just to Update: Self-Derision and Hot Coffee Edition

Devastation (with updates)

To begin with, the Lettera 33 smells like Stinky.  But that, I expected.  Also, it was packed with *nothing* around it...a few folded pieces of brown paper that did nothing except maybe keep the shipping box protected from the dirty case.  And, though it may or may not have happened in shipping, it has several issues...and none of them things I feel hopeful I can fix on my own.  The biggest one is that the carriage feels sort of wobbly, and the draw band is off, and although the whatchamacallit the draw band winds around still feels like the spring inside is working, it doesn't feel...right.

*sigh*

I should know better than to go near eBay.

On the bright side...um...the bright side?  It came with a little Lettera 33 manual.  Yay.

I guess there's always Blue Moon.  Maybe this will have a happy ending after all.  In the meantime, I guess I can concentrate on cleaning the case.  I don't have the heart to work on the busted typewriter.

UPDATE (and this is precisely why I shouldn't work on my own typewriters): I fixed the draw band...sort of...for awhile...before everything went terribly south.  The first time, the tension wasn't high enough, I don't think, because it would go about halfway across and then sort of lose steam.  So I went to try again, and it was closer, but still too loose.  So I tried another time.  And *this* time, the screw I was using as a weight in order to lower the cord through the typewriter and attach it at the bottom of the carriage on the other side got stuck in the mechanism.  And I can't get it out.  At all.  No amount of jiggling and tapping and yelling at it makes any difference.  Neither did cutting the cord to it so the screw is in there all alone.  The carriage is jammed to one side with that screw in there, and so far as I can see the carriage will need to come off to remove it, and there's no easy way to remove the carriage when you can't *move* the carriage.  So not only do I still have to take it down to Blue Moon, but now I can't even take it in the case, and I have to admit what an idiot I am.   I spent the better part of the evening trying to get the darned thing out, so I'm tired and cranky and I smell like mildew and I want to cry and maybe punch something.

So there's that.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: I got the carriage centered again.  And I sort of rigged up a temporary draw band to let me play with it.  The draw band doesn't work quite as it should...I probably still have the tension wrong, or it's too short.  And the margins aren't working...maybe they weren't working to begin with, or maybe I busted 'em.  In any case, I'm not attempting any further fixes on my own.  On the bright side, from what little typing I can do...this is one comfortable, snappy little typer.  Maybe all will come out right in the end...?

NaNoWriMo Redux (IOW TGIO)

Thank goodness it's over: the 50k words, at least. I have a few more scenes to finish in the draft, but that, too, is almost complete--I think writing short stories has helped me pace the story a little better, without a whole lot of floundering around trying to kill time before the conclusion. All the same, this was *not* an easy NaNoWriMo for me, and I am already thinking of throwing in the towel on next year's behalf. I think NaNoWriMo has run its course with me, and I've learned a lot through it, but it's time for us to part ways. It isn't fun anymore.

It wasn't that I had nothing to write about. I did. I had plenty of ideas. Actually, for once, I had the basic gist of the story in mind months beforehand: I started making character and plot notes clear back in June. A lot of them ended up not applying--a minor character who didn't even have a name until the last couple days of October became the female lead, and other secondary characters that were supposed to have fairly major parts slid off the screen almost immediately, but at least some elements lived on. I never truly got stuck with nothing to write next.

But I like to "remember" what I'm writing. I picture a scene, rehearse it in my head while driving or walking or lying in bed or doing the dishes until it's pretty close to right, then write it. You can't do that during NaNo. You have to just keep throwing words out. And I can't really get an entire story pictured in my head beforehand. Ever. Personalities change, or I realize the time line doesn't work (and this year's time line, simple as it was, gave me headaches), or someone needs an alibi or...something.

I wrote all throughout the year this year. Some of my writing, in my humble opinion, wasn't appallingly bad. Producing even a rough draft this thin and pale and disjointed makes me want to weep and pull my hair out. To make matters worse, I love my characters this year. I can picture them more clearly than ever before. And I let them down. I'm not sure if I can fix this story or not. I very much hope so, for their sake. I hope I can paint them as I see them, instead of the dim shadows in a flimsy shadowy world they currently are.

I did come to a new appreciation for the Alphasmart Neo--I switched to it from the wondrous Olympia SG-1 a little more than halfway through the month when it became apparent I was going to need to squeeze in more writing time, especially away from home. It had been neglected a bit this past year, but as I've said here before, it is the most practical writing implement I own. You get all the benefits of instant digital copy in a very durable, highly portable package, with instant-on, instant-save and all but limitless battery life. Someday computers may obtain those particular qualities, but for the moment, there isn't a gadget out there that completely compares. It's a very unromantic little thing, but it sure gets the job done. I'll switch to the netbook/computer for editing, but for pure writing, no current computer can hold a candle to the Neo.

Soundtrack for this year ended up being Matchbox Twenty, Ad Vielle Que Pourra, and various Harry Connick Jr. albums. There is no rhyme or reason to this. It just happens.

I should be able to finish the first draft in the next two weeks. And then, I guess I need to decide if I want to try to dive in and work on it right off, when I'm still a little jaded and a little too close to it, or put it away for a few months.

And speaking of jaded, by next fall, I may have forgotten all about this crabbiness. It was partially just a perfect storm of lack of morning writing time, colds, and life getting in the way. And maybe my story isn't so bad after all. Parts of it are pretty OK. Maybe NaNoWriMo '10 isn't *completely* out of the question. Whoa, do I have conviction or what?

Empty.

By rights, today I should be posting something deep and thoughtful about the young woman who inspired my blog's name, the Little Flower herself: St. Therese of the Child Jesus. The first of October is her feast day. I did go so far as to spend some time reading a few passages from Story of a Soul, but I'm once again unable to write.

It's so painful to have the drive, but nothing to say. I know it's mostly just a matter of doing. I need to start sitting down again in the mornings with pen and paper or what-have-you and letting whatever happens happen, good or bad. It just feels like nothing I have to say matters at the moment, ya know? I hate to even post to other people's blogs, 'cause I feel like all I can do is babble right now, and I'm just endlessly annoying everyone by existing. :-\

In happier writing news (perhaps!) the great NaNoWriMo forum purge is occurring as we speak, and in short order here we'll be barreling toward the starting line. If that doesn't get you excited about writing, what will?