Writer's Paralysis ...

… is what I think I've got.

Writer’s Paralysis worse than Writer’s Block, ‘cos WB usually means you don’t quite know where to go next in your story, but WP means you can’t even get that story going because you don’t know what the story is about; you don’t know what you want it to be about; you don’t know what genre it’s supposed to be; you don’t know who the characters are, or where they live, or why they may or may not do any or all or none of the things you might ask them to do. You have serious doubts, and I mean really serious doubts, about whether you will ever be able to be the writer you always dreamed of being.

Writer’s Paralysis is hell.

Throughout the last six to nine months I’ve dreamed of the moment when my exam would be behind me and I would be free to write again. That time is here and thank you very much, I now have Writer’s Paralysis!! I sit and gaze at the bright, blank screen of my lovely new notebook computer and feel nothing but weakness and despair. I lie in a steaming hot bath, a place which usually unleashes ideas, connections, insights and understanding, and all I get is hot and sweaty and prune-textured finger tips. Instead of walking along the beach getting invigorated and inspired, I moulder away the hours in aimless net-surfing and dvd-watching and food cupboard-visiting.

This morning, searching for inspiration, I read an excerpt from an article that appeared in the NY Times online edition of Book News, about author Kim Edwards (48) and her debut novel ‘The Memory Keeper’s Daughter’ which is apparently zooming up the trade paperback best seller charts. “With the ethical dilemma and family drama at its heart, “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter” is appealing to readers who want a literary page turner…” Ah! A new novelist my age, writing the kind of book I’d most like to write! So I went and checked her out, hoping to maybe uncover a secret or two, a trick to breaking out of WP, and breaking into good writing (not to mention bestsellerdom!). The excerpt from the novel on Amazon looked really, really good – beautiful word flow, characterization, everything … so on to her bio:

Kim Edwards is the author of a short story collection, The Secrets of a Fire King, which was an alternate for the 1998 PEN/Hemingway Award, and has won both a Whiting Award and the Nelson Algren Award. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she currently teaches writing at the University of Kentucky.

Despair. How can a South African-born and raised woman with no education in literature or writing ever hope to write that way? I just don’t have the grounding, the education, the understanding, or the way with words that people like Kim Edwards, Sue Monk Kidder, Marilynne Robinson and Ann Patchett have. I don’t have the flow of ideas and gift for dialogue and characterization that my talented and prolific writing friend Pat has. All I have right now is the fear that if I don’t get past this, I may never, ever become a writer of any description at all. And if I am not a writer, then what am I?

Nothing?

Maybe this is part of the paralysis – the fear that if I don’t succeed as a writer, then my life will have been meaningless. After all, as a divorcee in her late forties with a minor weight problem and braces, as a freelancer who lives from job to job, as a single who has had no ‘relationship’ for nearly ten years, there’s a large part of me that feels like a hideous failure. Yes, I have wonderful kids and yes, I have a few dear friends, and yes, I am relatively healthy, and yes, for the moment I’m surviving financially. But is that enough for me to call my life ‘successful’? If so, why do I feel this pressing need to move to the US? Why do I feel that if I don’t get writing again very soon, I’ll be sinking into some kind of pit of mediocrity and loss from which I may never emerge?

There are other factors that contribute to this paralysis, I know, that I need to face up to and smash down, if I am to move past this. It feels very much like the fight I sometimes have to keep hold of my faith in God, the fight I sometimes have to keep depression at bay, the fight I often have to not give in to the feelings of loneliness that being single generates. When it feels like there’s a rock in my gut, and all I can see is mud and slime and darkness, and all I feel like doing is crying. And therein lies a clue …

Because I have come to see that crying is a safe place for me. When I cry, I’m giving in to the feelings. I’m giving up, I’m saying ‘I can’t do anything about this, whatever it may be’. I can be passive, and bitter, and feel sorry for myself. And while that’s uncomfortable, it’s also safe. No scary changing-of-attitude needed. No scary ‘I’m going to get past this’ decision.

And that is why I’m back in Lord of the Rings territory (my all-time favorite movies). Partly Frodo making his decision to carry the ring at the Council of Elrond, partly Frodo staring up at the fires of Mount Doom, but mainly Aragorn at the entrance to Dimholt Road after Elrond says to him: “Put aside the ranger. Become who you were born to be.” Frodo had Sam by his side, but Aragorn stepped out alone, not even knowing whether he would survive but prepared to risk all to try and become who he was born to be.




The way to go? I think so…

Elleann.