Sunday September 4th, 2011

The exercise:

Let's go with: paralyzed.

It's been a pretty quiet day. We were treated to pancakes topped with nectarines - along with bacon and tomatoes with onions - for breakfast this morning, courtesy of the house guest who didn't make dinner last night. I could get used to this... unfortunately, they're heading home shortly.

Back to the harvest tomorrow morning.

Mine:

I've been feeling a growing desire to write lately - you know, other than here - but it's just not happening. It's not like I don't have the time or anything like that; even if it was just five minutes a day I could eventually get something done over the course of a week or two.

No, I've just been finding myself face to face with too many options. There are several stories over on Protagonize that are waiting patiently for me to write the next chapter. There's editing work to be done on my first drafts. There are new story ideas bouncing around my head, tempting me with their shiny possibilities.

I'm paralyzed by my inability to pick one option and get things going again. Because, obviously, I couldn't just go through the list one by one or something intelligent like that. Also, that would require making an actual list.

I'll get past this eventually, I know that. I even suspect that just writing about it here will help me through it. But it's frustrating while I'm in the middle of this muck.

6 comments:

Maddy said...

Stuck in the same day again. This life is killing me, but I could never leave my children. I'm paralyzed.

Greg said...

The pancakes sound delicious! The writing paralysis less so, though.
I'd say toss a coin (or roll a die) and use that to pick the first thing to work on at random. As you start writing again, it should become clear to you what you'd rather be doing, and then you know where you should actually start :)

Paralyzed
And so the seasons turn; Autumn becomes Winter, Winter becomes Spring and Spring turns into Summer, but it all happens without him and so I barely notice the time pass. Every day is just another day, they melt into one and run together like different flavours of ice-cream in the same dish. Just like the ice-cream, soon there's no distinguishing them; it's there, and it's not very appetising.
I'd swear I'm not paralysed. I do things, I go places, I laugh at people's silly jokes and crack some of my own. But then, when I'm on my own again, I sit and try very hard not to cry, not to think about him. I hide my phone so I'm not tempted to call him, and then next morning I have to call it to find out where I put it.
I'm not paralysed. I'm just not going anywhere.

Swapna Harish said...

hey Im impressed by ur blog... kudos to u for taking out time DAILY to write a post in ur blog!!!

Truly Inspired!!!!

Harry said...

The blank page mocks me
with a crop of fear
its gaping space winking
at the knot of my innards

its saying nothing
is its power
a driving blizzard
of disembodied question marks.

Regards,

H.

Marc said...

Maddy - short but very powerful; nicely done.

Greg - that's not a bad idea, I just might give that a go.

Oof, that one hit me like a punch to the gut. Fantastic final line, but the whole thing is beautifully crafted.

Swapna - thanks :)

Harry - love that second stanza, really sums things up nicely.

Brad said...

Michael was a special boy. Growing up, he frequently wet the bed and was the kid who sat at the back of the class touching himself inappropriately. Nobody really spoke to him and, to be honest, that's kind of understandable; how do you look somebody in the eye whilst they're doing that, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they're doing anything out of the ordinary?

He left school at 16 - not that he had much choice in the matter - and dossed around for a few years, enabled by his over-protective mother who didn't want anything bad to happen to her special boy. She knew that the real world would probably destroy him.

Eventually, though, the time came for Micheal to get a job. His mother wasn't keen on the idea at all, but she gave in on the condition that he took the safest job she could think of - working in the only factory in their tiny village. Probably due to the high levels of inbreeding rife in the community, the other workers were also special little boys. Michael would do just fine, and his mother was sure that nothing would be able to get to him there.

And that seemed to be the case for some twenty-odd years. Locked in the back room of a quiet baked goods factory inspecting doughnuts for imperfections, Micheal was indeed safe from the world. He walked to work; squealed hello to the security officer (that's right, squealed - unfortunately his voice was that of a pre-pubescent girl); inspected doughnuts all morning, alone; ate his packed lunch in the same room, also alone; worked another six hours; then walked the ten minutes back to his house and his mother.

His mother died three years after he started work.

As you can imagine, twenty years in his mind had started to become a little spongey. It was becoming paralysed by the monotiny that he was subjecting it to.

One day, Michael just snapped. His brain decided that it had inspected it's last doughnut. Instead of a cheese sandwich with the crusts chopped off, Michael took a machete to work.