I used to hear writers talk about sitting down and “opening up a vein” and it used to fill me with a certain disdain. I rejected that statement because it seemed self-indulgent, self-pitying, and melodramatic. I wanted writing to be a joyous activity where I “brought forth” what was within me and it soared to artistic heights my body could not achieve. I do still hold that aspiration, sometimes.
There has been a terror for me though, a type of avoidance that is not like the productive avoidance I do when I busy myself with things which I bargain for internally. (Things that I tell myself lead to writing, or need to be done so I can write, but which are not actually writing.) These activities usually make me chuckle at myself, then I go to my desk like a petulant child (oops, I got caught) and I get to work. The avoidance I feel lately though is different, darker, and it brings a different recrimination inside before I get to my writing.
It has to do with wasted time, or a distasteful chore.
It’s not that what I’m writing at the moment is distasteful. It is in fact something I signed up to do, volunteered for, suggested, pushed for, campaigned for, even at one point felt a great rush of adrenalin for. It is my doctoral dissertation on poetry, drama, and opera. I like the project. I like the writing. I like what I’ve written so far, and what I am now editing. What I don’t like: the other eyes I feel over my shoulder while doing the work; the self-recrimination at not having finished sooner, for having invested my time in a collaborative project which didn’t pan out, the self-blame for having mismanaged my most valuable resources, my time and my talent. It’s the litany of “should haves” repeating like a mantra in my head that terrorize me, panic me, and which I must overcome in order to finish this one particular project.
As my significant other likes to say, “There’s nothing else for it.”
