Hey, all! How goes it?

So, I came across this little shrapnel of writing humor when I was searching through my school folder to find my short story that I need to edit for my final (oh, joy), and I thought I’d share it with you. One of the things that I like to do when I have writer’s block is to sit down at my laptop and write down whatever pops into my head first. Usually it’s just me badgering myself about why I can’t write anything useful and/or good. Ever. Then I just let it go wherever it wants.

This is one of those things that I just found and I find it quite humorous. I had even titled it at the time (which I then used for the title of this blog post).

Sorry, again, for not posting on Saturday or Sunday. I have a bit more time in the gaps between finals (you know, the gaps in which I’m supposed to be studying. Oh.) So, hopefully, Chapter 19 of This is a Book will be coming to you sometime tomorrow. That’s the plan, at least.

Until then, enjoy this totally random excerpt 🙂

“Sit down and write,” they say. “It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as a writer is writing.” Bull crap! I am calling your bluff. What good is writing if all that comes out is crappy writing. It’s been almost two years since I wrote my novel and nothing good has poured from these fingers since. A washed up writer at the age of twenty-seven, how is that even possible?

My publicist has been trying to tell me how to channel my inner Zen. She’s been going through some kind of Buddhist stage, and she keeps insisting that my karma is getting in the way of my Nirvana. Well, no offense to Buddha, but being in the writing pits is probably what’s getting in the way of my Zen. Besides, what kind of karma gets in the way of writing? Did I accidentally stab my paper too hard with my pen and now the universe has decided that I may no longer write quality fiction?

Ridiculous.

And now my editor is breathing down my neck for another bestseller. (Not that my first novel was a bestseller—more like a mediocreseller—but she keeps saying it will happen if I press myself.) So what do I write? I don’t know. I have tried tons of topics, the dead, the living, the almost dead, the sometimes dead but only on a Thursday, and talking radishes. That’s what I came up with after another sleep deprived night of trying to, once again, let the success transfer from my head to my fingers. Did it happen? Of course not. Who ever heard of a person being entertained by a talking radish?

“Just keep at it,” they all say. “You’ll find it eventually, that thing that you can’t not write about.”

I’m still trying to find it, and it’s not coming. Everything I begin is painfully bad—wrong in some way that I can’t quite figure out. I am miserable, sitting here typing this with fingers who are already bored of this story, and music blaring from outside my window. The neighbors are throwing another barbeque, one I am, once again, not invited to. Perhaps I could walk over there, shake some hands, let them stare me down with their irritation. Or maybe the wide-eyes of the other guests will follow me around, as if they know I do not belong.

“Oh, there she is, the girl who can only write crappy work. The one who sits alone in her room, does not speak to anyone, does not walk out into the sun, does not live a life outside of her laptop computer and the library she is secretly hoarding. Poor girl, pitiful really, so sad. So sad.”

But who would I be kidding, really? Do I belong with those people? It’s hard to say. I can barely strike up a conversation without my own brain melting out my ears. I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate the baby babble that would escape my lips should I try to initiate some sort of speech. Or worse, I wouldn’t even get that far. They would turn their shoulders at me and let me walk past without a single word or head nod to acknowledge my presence. I would be walking alone through a throng of people who didn’t know I even existed. I wouldn’t be found out by the home owners because they would not even recognize me there. I wouldn’t be there, I would be gone, somewhere off in my own world, even when surrounded by a swarm of other humans laughing and talking and eating.

I would be just like I am now. Totally and utterly alone. And isn’t that just sad?

Embrace the Average!

Mel