Writer's Block, Or Something Like It (short story, Part 2)
April 1st 2009 12:22
Category: No Category
She drained the glass full of precious H20 and returned to staring at the computer screen... the almost perfect square sagged below the title box with the slight grey hue that meant it was the resting place of the cursor, which moved forth every now and again, when sufficient inspiration came along.
She wished the glass was still full so that she could drink again. Not that it would probably do any good. She eyed the eight tabs she had open within her browser with unease. Surely somewhere amongst her varied reading material lay adequate inspiration? she thought.
Earlier during the day she had contemplated writing upon two topics: Perfunctory Posting, and Being Interconnected Within The Network. But these topics seemed inappropriate for the moment: Why focus on the act of writing half-heartedly when she could be tuning into her passionate love for words? Besides, she hadn't yet figured out a way to describe her relationship to the network in a way that wouldn't offend anybody who happened to read it. It wasn't that tact was impinging on her creative prowess, it was that she hadn't been able to combine the two together yet.
She decided that reproducing the paragraph of spiritually aware advice she had received by email this morning might help her bring the latent motivation within out to play:
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The three tasks I think you should work on in the coming week are among the hardest any human being can attempt. Luckily, you now have an unusually strong aptitude for them, and are likely to receive unexpected assistance if you're brave enough to plunge ahead. Here they are. 1. Interrupt and overthrow negative trains of thought right in the middle of their flow through your brain. 2. Negotiate partial solutions to complex problems. In other words, do the half-right thing when it's impossible to do the totally right thing. 3. Understand that in order to graduate from a certain batch of weird karma that has
persisted, you must completely accept the situation as it is, acknowledge your role in precipitating and prolonging it, and feel gratitude for all that it has taught you.
She was aware that the inclusion of astrological material would find some of her readers regarding her as naive or ideologically skewered, but she had already mentioned before that she was not a believer in horoscopes as such; she believed in getting the right tools to her through appropriating the most relevant examples of every school of thought, and in Rob Breszny she had found an author who was able to inspire and energise her in a way that often had very little to do with her attitude towards the stars. She recognised in him a soul mate, someone who was effortlessly engaging to her.
At any rate, justifying herself was not really the point of the exercise. She would continue to contemplate the resonant paragraph which came from a Northern Californian gentleman she had never met, but was Facebook friends with. She loved Facebook.
Sometimes it was the most subtle movement forth that could initiate a whole movement within; for example, an online acquaintance's reluctance to accept her forward impetus towards writing an autobiography had left her only slightly grumpy, only vaguely dissatisfied... only slightly deterred from her enthusiasm for her idea. After all, she had not been looking to this particular acquaintance for inspiration. All the same, it was disappointing that this particular individual felt it appropriate to raise doubts about her authority as a storyteller, simply due to her age group. What happened to today's youth paving the way to new opportunities for all - young and old? (For she was sure that the more people who produced autobiographies, the more people producing autobiographies there would be. Kind of the way being design-conscious in Copenhagen was a wide-spread concern, reinforced by design being a flourishing industry. The young would lead the old.)
In the time it had taken her to write the previous paragraphs she had started listening to music; alterno-pop by Robyn (Carlsson), to be more specific. This made her feel more wholesome and bouncy, since listening to the Swedish singer's stylishly mellifluous vocal repertoire tended to have that sort of impact on her. She supposed that the introduction of Bum Like You and Who's That Girl into her aural landscape was helping to dispel those unwelcome stasis-inspired, metanarrative-related thoughts that built up in her mind on occasion.
She was wearing a red chequered hat to keep out the glare of the living room lights, which threatened to rub away her drawn-on eyebrows if she pulled it down any further, but she supposed that it didn't really matter: She was at home, and her mother was the only other witness to her proximity to smudged make-up. This was no time to pay tribute to 'face'.
She often wondered what kind of writing styles she could pass off as her own. In her past story she had harboured a kind of pessimism which she had considered a bold way of recontextualising past grievances. She now realised that she was just reproducing the pain and dissonance along for the ride, no matter how light she could convince herself the references were, how ultimately lacking in friction when included in her narrative.
And suddenly she wished she could obliterate the story, for it was a beginning; and she longed to begin differently! How she wished to be free of past inauspicious ventures, be ridiculously vulnerable to sheer positivity and nothing else; but could she really be unerringly positive? What did it mean to produce a well-rounded, optimistic story or narrative?
How deeply could she transform her identity today? What aspect of her stubbornly reactionary imaginary audiences was she trying to momentarily appease? Could she keep up the level of compromise, and when was something going to give?
(She supposed it was very postmodern to wear a hat on the inside of a building, and to take it off when moving outside.)
Last night she had tried to explore her fears - like images from the movie The Ring - which informed the position she assumed in bed; why were those images so pervasive? Why would she seek them out, what was their appeal? Was it their sleekness, their uncluttered aesthetic? Their sultry simplicity? What did they invert/subvert/deconstruct? She supposed she didn't think of the images often enough for them to pose a very large threat to her in/stability.
So what was it, then, the thing that really ate away at her soul?
Or should she be focusing on what helped her build it up?
There were too many knowns in the picture, she decided... why, even the 'UNKNOWN error' messages displaying in front of her writing box every few minutes favoured the ambiguous with greater frequency than she sometimes was, reminding her to wind her way out of the spiritual neglect that came attached to contemplating metanarratives.
And yet her professional, social and cultural life necessitated that she turn her attention to them over and over again. When would it end? Was there a way to dodge them that she was about to uncover? How could she claim new ground to theorise from?
Had she transformed her writer's block, or tightened its grasp on her soul through this outpouring textual activity? No, she didn't feel enlightened as a result of writing what she had, but she supposed partial illumination had been achieved, and that would have to do for now.
She wondered how she would feel immediately after she sent out 'Writer's Block, Or Something Like It' into the world of searchable text and viewable material. Did she dare to find out?
She wished the glass was still full so that she could drink again. Not that it would probably do any good. She eyed the eight tabs she had open within her browser with unease. Surely somewhere amongst her varied reading material lay adequate inspiration? she thought.
Earlier during the day she had contemplated writing upon two topics: Perfunctory Posting, and Being Interconnected Within The Network. But these topics seemed inappropriate for the moment: Why focus on the act of writing half-heartedly when she could be tuning into her passionate love for words? Besides, she hadn't yet figured out a way to describe her relationship to the network in a way that wouldn't offend anybody who happened to read it. It wasn't that tact was impinging on her creative prowess, it was that she hadn't been able to combine the two together yet.
She decided that reproducing the paragraph of spiritually aware advice she had received by email this morning might help her bring the latent motivation within out to play:
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The three tasks I think you should work on in the coming week are among the hardest any human being can attempt. Luckily, you now have an unusually strong aptitude for them, and are likely to receive unexpected assistance if you're brave enough to plunge ahead. Here they are. 1. Interrupt and overthrow negative trains of thought right in the middle of their flow through your brain. 2. Negotiate partial solutions to complex problems. In other words, do the half-right thing when it's impossible to do the totally right thing. 3. Understand that in order to graduate from a certain batch of weird karma that has
She was aware that the inclusion of astrological material would find some of her readers regarding her as naive or ideologically skewered, but she had already mentioned before that she was not a believer in horoscopes as such; she believed in getting the right tools to her through appropriating the most relevant examples of every school of thought, and in Rob Breszny she had found an author who was able to inspire and energise her in a way that often had very little to do with her attitude towards the stars. She recognised in him a soul mate, someone who was effortlessly engaging to her.
At any rate, justifying herself was not really the point of the exercise. She would continue to contemplate the resonant paragraph which came from a Northern Californian gentleman she had never met, but was Facebook friends with. She loved Facebook.
Sometimes it was the most subtle movement forth that could initiate a whole movement within; for example, an online acquaintance's reluctance to accept her forward impetus towards writing an autobiography had left her only slightly grumpy, only vaguely dissatisfied... only slightly deterred from her enthusiasm for her idea. After all, she had not been looking to this particular acquaintance for inspiration. All the same, it was disappointing that this particular individual felt it appropriate to raise doubts about her authority as a storyteller, simply due to her age group. What happened to today's youth paving the way to new opportunities for all - young and old? (For she was sure that the more people who produced autobiographies, the more people producing autobiographies there would be. Kind of the way being design-conscious in Copenhagen was a wide-spread concern, reinforced by design being a flourishing industry. The young would lead the old.)
In the time it had taken her to write the previous paragraphs she had started listening to music; alterno-pop by Robyn (Carlsson), to be more specific. This made her feel more wholesome and bouncy, since listening to the Swedish singer's stylishly mellifluous vocal repertoire tended to have that sort of impact on her. She supposed that the introduction of Bum Like You and Who's That Girl into her aural landscape was helping to dispel those unwelcome stasis-inspired, metanarrative-related thoughts that built up in her mind on occasion.
She was wearing a red chequered hat to keep out the glare of the living room lights, which threatened to rub away her drawn-on eyebrows if she pulled it down any further, but she supposed that it didn't really matter: She was at home, and her mother was the only other witness to her proximity to smudged make-up. This was no time to pay tribute to 'face'.
She often wondered what kind of writing styles she could pass off as her own. In her past story she had harboured a kind of pessimism which she had considered a bold way of recontextualising past grievances. She now realised that she was just reproducing the pain and dissonance along for the ride, no matter how light she could convince herself the references were, how ultimately lacking in friction when included in her narrative.
And suddenly she wished she could obliterate the story, for it was a beginning; and she longed to begin differently! How she wished to be free of past inauspicious ventures, be ridiculously vulnerable to sheer positivity and nothing else; but could she really be unerringly positive? What did it mean to produce a well-rounded, optimistic story or narrative?
How deeply could she transform her identity today? What aspect of her stubbornly reactionary imaginary audiences was she trying to momentarily appease? Could she keep up the level of compromise, and when was something going to give?
(She supposed it was very postmodern to wear a hat on the inside of a building, and to take it off when moving outside.)
Last night she had tried to explore her fears - like images from the movie The Ring - which informed the position she assumed in bed; why were those images so pervasive? Why would she seek them out, what was their appeal? Was it their sleekness, their uncluttered aesthetic? Their sultry simplicity? What did they invert/subvert/deconstruct? She supposed she didn't think of the images often enough for them to pose a very large threat to her in/stability.
So what was it, then, the thing that really ate away at her soul?
Or should she be focusing on what helped her build it up?
There were too many knowns in the picture, she decided... why, even the 'UNKNOWN error' messages displaying in front of her writing box every few minutes favoured the ambiguous with greater frequency than she sometimes was, reminding her to wind her way out of the spiritual neglect that came attached to contemplating metanarratives.
And yet her professional, social and cultural life necessitated that she turn her attention to them over and over again. When would it end? Was there a way to dodge them that she was about to uncover? How could she claim new ground to theorise from?
Had she transformed her writer's block, or tightened its grasp on her soul through this outpouring textual activity? No, she didn't feel enlightened as a result of writing what she had, but she supposed partial illumination had been achieved, and that would have to do for now.
She wondered how she would feel immediately after she sent out 'Writer's Block, Or Something Like It' into the world of searchable text and viewable material. Did she dare to find out?
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Comment by Morgan Bell
Science News
Deep Pencil
Business News
Movie Train
Artist Quirk
you remind me i havent written in my notebook for ages . . .
Comment by Postmodern Critic
Postmodern Critic
Relativity Watch
Padsoc
Yeah, sometimes I spend so much time writing online that I don't get to my diary for days...