I vow that from now on (my hand is in the air in some kind of vowing pose) I will try to write more! It's not like things haven't happened...because they have--such is life, right? But I keep trying to write a novel loosely based on my life and every time I get three pages in I get stuck. I'm a great writer. I attended the G.A.T.E. schools as a kid due to my academic and creative abilities. I wrote papers in college that would make you cry. I had professors tell me they graded everyone else against my work which was used as the standard. I have so few talents, and writing happens to be a minor talent that I could certainly build upon, but I keep hitting the Wall. I wracked my brain trying to figure out how and why I smack into the Wall. I mean, I have the story, and it starts out with a great flow, but then...screeeeeeeching halt. However....during this last attempt a week ago, I think I've stumbled upon that which slams me into the Wall. Did you know that to write a book, unless it's completely nonfiction with indices in the back and everything, and not autobiographical, you have to show a vulnerable side of you? Yes! And you have to write about emotions by going into your deepest, most tenderest places in your soul and find the stuff that pulls tears out of the ducts and things that wrench the heart or even just start a flutter...for me wherever that is, it has a sign on the outside of the door with my picture on it and a line drawn through it. I get sappy and emotional like the next gal, but something about revealing such a personal part of me is unnerving. Even if it's "loosely" based on facts, it still requires me to go to the door of "don't go in there" and "I'm warning you" because then I might have to answer to some of it.
I mean, how many of us have thought that about the shades of gray author--that the woman gets freaky deaky, from what I hear. Come on, you have to find the material from somewhere (the emotional stuff, people...I know I can "research" any topic and write extensively on it.)
Well, then don't get emotional in the story, you say...
This is how little I want to share--I got all the way to the part where the reader meets the male of the story. It's based on a real person you know, and this person's eyes have this Colin Firth or Antonio Banderas gaze that captures women and draws them in--no! for real, this is for real. But how do I explain even a little bit of that without getting "blecky" about it? Yes, blecky. Bleck.
I rarely cry in front of people. Sounds like a personal problem I have? In my defense, I've revealed those tender parts of me in little baby doses, only to have the recipient look around for a lifeboat or an exit ramp. Just as little as three months ago I started tearing up in front of my teens sons, and they rolled their eyes.
I like the Wall...I have a Wall...I will stay behind my Wall, until I'm 80 years old when I get to do whatever, and no one can say anything. And it's all cute too, right?
In other words, by the time I get to the point where I can write a story loosely based on my life I will have forgotten most of it.
The other side of it is the prospect of my children reading it. My adolescence was seedy, sketchy, stuff of the underbelly...well, I never killed anyone, I've never done more than silly "girl fighting," but I've skipped along the tops of everything else, and that is stuff for my posterity after I'm dead.
Am I exaggerating?
Just the other night I shared something with my spouse, of twenty years now I'm going to add, and he stopped the conversation and said, "Did you just say that you _____ ______ ____?" Yes, I answered in a matter-of-factly way, I am not embarrassed or ashamed of who I used to be to get where I am today. I didn't turn out so badly, after all. Just ask my mother. Well, my husband was a bit jarred and probably even sad for me, but no tears over here buddy, I'm just chatting through the Wall I lean against when I share "that" stuff.
SO...that said...I will be back blogging and making light of the things in my life that I can't laugh about in the moment but certainly can a week (a month?) later. Remember, I sit on both sides of the desk where special needs are concerned. I do it 24/7...unless my mom wants to give me respite, and then she'll take Kindsay for an hour or two. And then I now have two teens sons and my oldest daughter living at home, and not enough three-day weekends in the world to get rid of my puffy eyes.
Bottom line--I spend much of my day walking across the top of my Wall, leaning to one side in a self-reflective state of "to leap, or not to leap." And that is the question. Or rather...Y Me?
