Thursday, July 15, 2010//11:32 PM

NOT Blocked. Stroked.

The only reason why I'm blogging right now is because I'm avoiding having to sit down, stare at my laptop, get the rusty slash dusty screws in my noggin working and actually start writing.
Don't get my wrong, dear ego. I CAN write. Just not recently. And by recently I mean the past 4 years.
Why, you ask? I really don't know.
Ok I'm lying. I'm just scared. Shit scared. Really really scared that I won't be any good-even to my standards. I used to be able to churn out passable narrative essays under 90 minutes. And I used to be quote proud of them. After being forced (academically, at least) to write essays on nothing but cold hard facts with somewhat logical arguments and solutions, intervention methods and their implementations, research findings with awkward discussions and tons of academic jibberish that I know I won't understand if I re-read them right now, I just cannot write. The type of stuff that I used to love writing about. All I can do now is write random lines that could either be lame lyrics or lamer poetry. Sigh.
I wouldn't say I have writers' block. Because that would mean that I HAVE already started my story and somehow got stuck with the storyline or the scenes just couldn't flow. What I have is writers' stroke. Which is the result of laziness combined with an inferiority complex. I wish I had writers' diarrhoea. That way I'd have lots of practice and lots of material to select from should I decide to be a published author one day. (deadpanning here)
The next sucker punch my inferiority complex has had to deal with is the disturbing revelation that a certain genre of books of a particular writer that I've always enjoyed passionately- which also happens to grant me the awesome ability to devour her books (an ability I rarely have)- has been deemed to be mindless fluff by one too many people.
It's fine. I've already embraced the concept that I have a young mind (Yes, thank you Professor Interviewer. I've already had a breakdown in the toilet of the university that I may very well be attending in a month. I'm not really bugged by the prospect of suffering in academic hell over the next 3 years anymore).
But the combination of having a young mind (which isn't necessarily bad I guess?) and not being able to write stuff of reasonable quality scares me. A lot. So much so that when my dad just leaned over and asked me what I was writing, I freaked and told him I was doing research. Which I then proceeded to lamely visit the "Secret life of an American teenager" site. Which garnered me a weird look from him and a "you call that research?".
Yeah.
But the never-say-die/I-don't-wanna-waste-eight-months-doing-zilch spirit in me is kinda forcing me to at least attempt to plot a storyline. So. Wish me luck.




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