Speech Impediment

I can’t say what I mean. I don’t always mean what I say. I try to express a thing, and it comes out to be another thing entirely. I start talking mid-thought, as if you can read my mind. This must be why I always wanted to be a writer. If only there were [...]

Stuck

I don’t need to do any soul-searching to realize that I’m bored with the turn my life has taken. When the world slows, when the deadlines are met, when there is time to breathe… that’s when I come to face it. There I am, numb in the brain. I cannot stand to do this with [...]

Distractions Abound

I’m scattered.
In the past week or so I:

Started new writing project.
Got stuck on new writing project.
Kept my other new project in the back of my mind… felt guilty… felt excited… felt overwhelmed… felt like it was the right thing to do.
Carried around drafts of my two unfinished short stories: “W” and “F.” Sometimes I want [...]

With Time to Kill

My mom was in the city yesterday taking an oral exam at a local high school. I couldn’t go in with her, so during her test I wandered the neighborhood, waiting until she was done.
I had almost two hours to kill.
I found myself beneath an on-ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. I couldn’t say how I [...]

Q&A

After reading the VOGUE “Shape” issue in which women reveal the parts of their bodies that they truly despise: tummies, chins, thighs, butts, etc., it occurs to me that I don’t know what part of my body I hate more than any other. It also occurs to me that this probably wasn’t the point of [...]

Cleansing

An overwhelming moment, standing beneath the loft bed, surrounded on all sides by old writing drafts—boxes here, scattered pages there, a tower on the bookshelf, a cabinet full.
It feels symbolic somehow. That I can’t move ahead with my life when I have this disappointment all around me. I spend my days living under its weight, [...]

The “Dear Writer” Letter

I stayed home sick from work yesterday, but there was a matter of utmost urgency, for which I had to leave the apartment: dropping the Netflix in the mailbox. Otherwise, how would I get the next DVD in time to continue the Freaks and Geeks marathon this weekend?
It was while I was downstairs checking our [...]

Fishbowl

I can’t believe I’m sitting here in public trying to write. It’s such an absurd activity some days. I started the morning at one table, not a prime table away from the door because the best ones were being used, so a backup table, a compromise. I was uncomfortable. I was aware of who could [...]

Needing to Write

This post from goodthomas cheered me up.
He says:
Someone recently asked me why, after being an actor for so many years, why I would want to write, why I would want to subject myself to more rejection. I smiled and said that as an actor, I had to audition, I had to have someone give me [...]

Turning Point

Something has happened in the past few weeks, something profound, though I can’t quite wrap my brain around it. In fact I’m not yet sure what it was/is. I remember the after effects—the dreary negativity that I’ve been trying to bury for weeks now, which I couldn’t help writing about here but it was ridiculous [...]

Watch Me Give Up

I am about to give up. Watch it happen, in slow motion:
This week I haven’t written much. I’ve gotten up every day to make an attempt, and my failures are astounding. Such as this morning. I got up, got wet by the snow, got my favorite writing table, opened my outline—didn’t feel like working on [...]

Day Job Calculations

low salary
+
3% raise no matter how hard you work
+
downgraded health care
+
disrespect (corporate-level)
+
disrespect (personal-level)
+
no such thing as a Christmas bonus
+
forgotten promises
+
UTTER BOREDOM
x
inept coworkers
(or else)
lazy coworkers
(or else)
coworkers who just don’t care because it’s your job to correct their mistakes even if you mark them 5 times
+
every time there is a mistake in a book it is your [...]

Gunfire

Apparently I can’t recognize the sound of gunfire.
E did, right away. I just thought it was firecrackers. Lots of them. Going off very, very quickly. And then helicopters, which are still flying overhead now.
* * *
And after…
Early the next morning: I wondered what it would be like to go down to the street, if I [...]

Regarding the Excerpt I Didn’t Show You

There was a page 123 I did not post here. It was from my other novel-in-progress, a novel that lives in a box, or numerous boxes, under my couch, and in random other scribbled stages all over the apartment. It’s not so much “in progress” any longer—rather, it’s been left to rot because I haven’t [...]

The Bit(s) from Page 123 & 23

Saw this on Loud Solitude, and I’ll play:
Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven’t gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven’t gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the [...]

Doors I Haven’t Opened

Miniature door beside my favorite table at the coffee shop… It is small, as if made especially for a short person (me). It is painted the same color as the walls. It’s locked from the outside. I sit just beside it. I wonder, at times, about turning the lock to see what’s in there. The [...]

Not-Writing Day

Yesterday I didn’t write. I worked. I went to my weekend writing spot with every intention of writing, at least for the morning, but then started panicking about the freelance copyediting project I have, opened up the file, started working, and the day was shot from there.
A day in which I don’t write is rotten, [...]

The Nod

I love the passing of two writers in the corridor, the meeting of eyes, the nod of acknowledgment. We don’t speak because in my mind is the growing shape of a sentence and in hers might be the same. To speak would be to lose the words… we can’t take the risk. We are moving [...]

Uncommitted

I know I’ve been a grouch all week. Let’s not dwell on that.
Mel at The Mel Mystique had a recent post about committing—to her kung fu training, to her writing—that I kept thinking about as I slogged through this week. That’s my problem. I am so afraid of failing (again) that I am not allowing [...]

Symbolism (Lost)

I tried to communicate with someone at work, but my blank email meant nothing to her. I tried to explain that it was an artistic representation of how I was feeling at the moment, as shown here:

…But she didn’t get it.
My blank mood occurred directly after an email forward saying:
???
Right now, I feel just ——————————–
You [...]