”It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.”
Thus saith Rainer Maria Rilke. Or in my case, the diversionary tactics from writing book two continue. I am beginning to engage in such productive behavior as drafting a letter to John Ashcroft discussing our six degrees of separation, self-destructive marathon training, avoiding phone calls from a certain publisher, consuming exorbitant amounts of wings, and otherwise curling up in a ball.
This is miserable.
And it all started with last week’s legal writing class. I had the ee cummings beaten right out of me with Peter Martin’s technical editing, grammatical analysis, and marketing based edification. My left brain rejoices, my right brain wilts. (Alas, I have yet to master cerebral transitions like you Linda.) Atrophy is setting in. It’s bad.
To think this is what sits over my desk in my law firm office. Charles would be so disapointed.
Oh, Louis Achincloss, please come back. I need you to explain to me how you wrote a novel a year while working as a NYC attorney. And hurry, my publisher is getting antsy.
In the meantime, I’m trying to forget Thomas Mann’s seeringly true words. “A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
Don’t I know it Tommy.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Linda // Sep 19, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Ahhh, the old split-brain syndrome. Men got it easier than us, they compartmentalize so much better than we power chicks (we are, after all, the masters of multi-tasking). Try not sleeping - that’s what works for me. The real writing will come, even admidst all the staid legalese you must push forth into the world for your day job. Now, I must return to my zero-inflated negative binomial modeling analyses…
2 Jarod // Sep 20, 2007 at 10:26 am
I say go 17th century. Find a nice cabin with no electricity, running water, and real danger of bear attack. Just tell work you are on “colonial leave” (sure, they’ll go for that).
Or you can always go back to the Dover cliffs!
3 towwas // Sep 20, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Is it wrong that I really like writing? Probably because most of my stories are 200 words long. The 3-4,000 word features I’ve written did make me want to cry. Although I liked the actual writing…it’s all the damn *thinking* that kills me.
4 Sarah Moffett // Sep 21, 2007 at 11:19 am
Linda~if they can make pills to stop the mind from splitting, where are the ones to expedite the process? ~Insane Ingrid
Jarod~I like your Thoreauvian ideals. Now if only Dover would let me take up residence on their white cliffs. ~Wilma Walden
Towwas~No. It’s brilliant that you like writing. So do I. That’s why it hurts when I can’t. ~Hopeless Hannah
5 Best One Liners. Got One? // Nov 14, 2007 at 5:22 pm
[…] I’m back where I started. But as I’ve said before, Rilke works for me. “It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to […]
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