Mind Dump--Why Write This Stupid Book

Robert H. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize Winning Photograph, 1963.


Thinking this morning about a photo exhibit I saw years ago in Dallas. Pulitzer Prize winning photos, mounted on boards that were easily 30 by 40, hanging from the rafters with paragraphs of explanation and background beside them. Emotions embedded like genetic code in the colors and shapes.

How many needed explanation? The Vietnamese girl running naked down the streets after a napalm attack, the Kent State shootings, the Lee Harvey Oswald shooting, The World Trade Center attacks, the flag raising on Iwo Jima, a soldier's homecoming, the fireman with the child after Oklahoma City, Babe Ruth retiring. Photos since 1942.

The art adorns the 7th floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, one floor up from where Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy. Downstairs, enclosed in glass is the "sniper's lair," a view no longer afforded any museum visitor. But there one floor up from history, I slip past the photograph of Ruby shooting Oswald and stand at the 7th floor corner window. Dealey Plaza lays out its white colonnades, its uterine shape, all a dull green on this overcast day.

The X on the street stirs something unnameable (or is it?). It's the place where John Kennedy died, the place where history turned forever. The exhibit, the emotions, the photograph my eye takes now--almost Oswald's view--all of it, life-changing.

That's why this novel is important

The Terminal Cancer of the Writer

Ever have one of those days? You know, a day when every word, every sentence, every paragraph sounds like a juvenile, moronic, wannabe writer wrote it? The scene couldn't have stiffer characters, lamer dialogue, more pedestrian description (baby blue eyes? Seriously?).... You have the motivation, the hunger, the knowledge, yet, with sentence after sentence, a dismal truth blooms in your mind: you really are a charlatan, a dilettante, an incompetent fool.

You are quite certain that if by some chance you could instantaneously pluck the worst writer on the planet from the huddling, scribbling masses that you would be that guy. No photo-finish, no tight race with hanging chads. Yep, far and away the winner, you're the one, THE worst writer alive, blissfully unaware, pounding out your middling prose as if it were the next prize winner.

Okay, you get the point. It's the enemy, the devil of all good prose. The terminal cancer of the writer. So, now, you've diagnosed--perhaps even self-medicated (more whiskey, Mr. Fitzgerald?). What do you do about it?

I'll get back to you....

Help! I'm procrastinating

What I do when I don't want to write:

• Do the dishes
• Play fetch with the dog
• Research carpal tunnel syndrome (which I'm getting from all this typing)
• Research the Kennedy assassination (subject of current novel project)
• Play Scrabble
• Reheat coffee
• Read Entertainment Weekly
• Bite cuticles
• Nap
• Watch Youtube videos of great drummers
  
• Research Hollywood celebrities to play the movie roles of my novel
  

I have time to write. I schedule it each day. I have the will to write. Sitting down each morning, I am ready, fingers poised to pour out the brain's inspiration. And some days, the brain rebels. My dog won't come inside when I call him; the brain won't form a sentence, or when it does, the sentence blows. DELETE. Try again.

Not sure what that's about. I know this, though. The Internet is the enemy. Some mornings, I have to get belligerent. This involves a trip to Barnes & Noble where the Internet costs money, where I have to sit down and write (or browse the new fiction--I REALLY am my worst enemy).

The things we tell ourselves, the acrobatics we go through....