I'm not sure if it's Seasonal Affective Disorder or what, but I've been in a terrible mood over the last few days, something apparently impenetrable to the fine folks at Forest Pharmaceuticals, since their Celexa isn't doing the trick. Writing about being depressed is almost as bad as writing about being tired - both instill sadness and fatigue in your intended audience. Yeah yeah, but I can't always be full of spitfire and vinegar, god damn you.
I'm working on a Salon piece that is a brilliant little ditty that should write itself, but I find myself staring off into space, hyperconcentrating on some tiny memory from seven years ago, or just outlining the maps of France on our walls. I don't typically suffer from writer's block (a year and a half on this blog should tell you that), but I do suffer from writer's malaise, a systemic detachment from the English language in general. Perhaps I miss the kind of instant feedback that our college town offered, or maybe I need to be immersed in close quarters with like-minded friends.
Or maybe I just need to shut up, and remember that the inspiration for a piece of art will always pale in the cold slog of actually having to create it. It is in those exhausted days at the end of a novel, or an article, or a movie, that you desperately want to claw your face off, or flap your arms and fly to the moon - but you don't. You stay and work out of pure professionalism and craft, because that's what separates you from others who wanted to do something like this, but lost heart in the face of unbelievable odds. Shut up, you fucking whiner. This is what you DO.
Posted by at October 16, 2003 11:12 PM