Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Love is not a victory march

Insomnia by Mohammed Nady, found at Rebellious Arab Girl's site

I think the most powerful aspect of the Wilberforce House exhibition in Hull that we visited at the weekend was the sheer scope of the project: from the origins of slavery up to the continuation of various forms of slavery today. The exhibition leaves the visitor with a sense of both pride and profound sadness, and I think this is ultimately its success: it goes beyond the issue of the slave trade and presents an exhibition that shows the entire horrific and glorious spectrum of the human condition. Please make sure you go and see it.

Fingers should only be raised to point the way forward.

(This was the descriptor for an amazing artwork in the exhibition, I caught the quote on the guided tour, but not the artist - clarification welcome by comment, please)

Is anyone else not sleeping? I've felt like a member of the living dead for the last two days and that's without hangovers (maybe it's alcohol withdrawal). Maybe it's the weather. Being overtired makes writing very hard as I get the urge to lean on the 'z' key endless and just post that. Maybe I'm thinking so hard I'm exhausting myself by the end of every, well considered day.

The Youngest Indie posted a few days ago that: "I think fear is the only thing holding me back. Many times, I sit there and think, I'm not that talented."

This sums up my current wrestling match with my own writing perfectly. The more barriers I remove from writing, the more terrified of writing I become. At the moment, I'm forcing myself through the process slowly, gently and in a highly organized fashion. My friends and family keep asking me how the writing's going and I keep holding myself back from launching myself at the ground screaming:

"I CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN'T DOOOOOOOO IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTT!!!!"

Instead I have a well-practiced grimace that appears and a polite, "Ooooooooook, yeah. It's ok." If they're stupid enough to keep pursuing it after that then I usually confess, "I'm not talking about my writing much at the moment," which people usually assume means that I'm working on something I don't want to jinx.

It doesn't. It means I'm working very slowly and with great terror, much as one scales the more pointed aspects of Snowdonia, and if you ask me about it again, I'll rip out your jugular with my fingernails and when the police finally arrive I'll have drained your limp carcass of all its blood in the hope that drinking the human lifeforce might force me towards creative fluency.

I told you. This lack of sleep thing is really getting to me.

1 comment:

Lisa Clark said...

You CAN write. It's fact.

You are an incredible writer. Again, fact.

I do believe only yesterday in the ladies that a certain miss chevverchops was coaching me in the subject of fear - how sometimes we need the fear to appreciate the fab?

"Do one thing that scares you every day” Eleanor Roosevelt.

Open up your WIP and write. Feel the fear, write something, anything - baby steps remember, and then feel the fabness when you fill up a page with your amazing words.

Enjoy the journey of being a writer, enjoy being able to use your words to create.

You CAN write. Fact.