Quickly now. I know this blogging habit of mine is a distraction from work, so I’m going to try to post this and be done.
I finally reopened the three stories I’ve started, which was sort of like opening a box of rummage sale items that didn’t sell, all dusty and dirty leftovers, how the hell did so many flies get into the boxes anyway?. So I put the two aside that I am less interested in pursuing at the moment and decided to focus on a story that has a female as the lead character. Who’d of thunk? I’m finally going to write a story about a woman. The other two stories I pushed aside for now both have male leads.
But it has problems. (Obviously). Problems that were evident by page 10, and so here I go again, back to a full treatment -- not that I really wrote a clean one in the first place – that is where my problems began, with a weak, lazy attempt at a treatment. That and the fact I let all the bro-ha-ha around here take precedence over my writing habit. It’s hard getting back into the routine. Indolence is so easy and pleasant at times. Just like each time I allow myself to over-eat or eat crap – it is a struggle to get back into a healthy routine. But I gotta -- I just do.
So, back to waking up early before anyone else can start asking and begging for everything from “another hug” to having their bottoms wiped. Back to setting three alarm clocks. Back to brewing coffee and drinking two pots before noon. One new-ish strategy for me, via web-stream, is to listen to a Mid-Western “oldies” radio station. A friend of mine who works there turned me onto it and I found it very helpful earlier this summer to listen while I was working on stuff, but not so today. Today, the station was holding a fund drive for the “fight against cancer.” Each time the subject came up and the D.J kept saying that C-word over and over again, it made my writing go slower and slower – I was getting so depressed. I finally had to turn it off. I’m superstitious as they come, I suppose, and since my Mom went through it a couple of years ago it has been a subject matter that makes my skin crawl, let alone hear about repeatedly between songs. The fund drive will continue tomorrow and so I think I will avoid listening, at least to that station. Maybe I can search around for another, as long as I do not allow it to turn into yet another distraction.
Other than the downer subject matter streamed over the air-waves, as I began the treatment again, the fact that I have a female “heroine” made me very uneasy. I usually write about men, or children. (Ha!) I think probably because that is what I observe the most. And what I’ve observed about women, in general, I do not like. I want to write a character that I love, and who I want other people to love, and somehow at least at this moment, it seems impossible. So far, my female character is an absolute pain in the ass. Is there a word for someone who dislikes their own sex? How can I have grown up as this person, as this woman and realize only now, very clearly, that I regard most women, myself included, as not very admirable or interesting?
I am a sexist? Ouch.
Geez, I hate to think that this thing I’m writing is to be nothing more than psychological self-therapy. Gag. I mean, how entertaining could this be in the end?
Plod on. Plod. Plod. Plod.
