I'm not full of shit, that's not what I'm saying -- I just shat a three-flusher (our toilet's old and I usually give up after two flushes because, really, how much water do I need to waste to get rid of unsightliness? --but these turds were clouding up the water so I flushed again to get it all down) -- I'm talking about creativity, particularly my novel. Good ol' chapter seven is a stick in the mud, in the shit-colored muck of what I think will be an exceptional novel when I'm through with it. I dare not say "if" or even "when and if."I found some similarities between chapters seven and nine, and I think I've pretty much eradicated those; I think I have a pretty good idea about how to get chapter seven out, and I've written it down. But now the editing process -- the copy editing process is poking at me. Got me stuck. I feel like I'm red-inking typos and stupid shit when I really want/need to be getting through the story, moving on to the next chapter, which isn't chapter eight because I feel okay with that -- it's a short chapter, a diary entry, as four or five chapters of the fourteen are. Next is chapter nine. The leftovers, so to speak, of chapter seven. But that's not exactly true because chapter seven and chapter nine weren't identical, they just shared some basic points, which as I already stated, I'm pretty sure I've removed.
I met a guy the other night. When I was introduced to him, the guy doing the introducing said, "Oh, hey, this guy's a writer, too. You should talk." In my head I thought, Why? It's not like we're Trekkies or even engineers so that we would have something in common to talk about. Instead I swallowed my insipidness and asked, "What do you write?" He said, "Well, I haven't written anything in a while." I thought, Well, then, you're more of a thinker, aren't you? (Or at least a thinking-about-being-a-writer...) He said something that I can't remember, to which I replied, "Because writing is hard!" He said, "No, actually, it's very easy, you just have to let it flow." Yeah, and shitting is easy when you've got diarrhea.
I didn't say that.
When I told Steven this story, he did a little wave bye-bye sign with his hand, as if to say he has no patience for people like that. I guess I have more patience than that, but I was thinking in the moment What are we talking for? He was kind of a reactionary and opinionated dude. I don't know where to go with people like that. I don't want to argue, and I really don't enjoy just humoring them, so I feel myself sort of clamming up. Self-inflicted social constipation!
I do these writing exercises but I haven't had a lot of luck in the recent past at actually writing, at being a writer. Maybe I should say I'm an "exercise writer." It seems that I always can start writing, jabbering with a pen, nonsensical stuff like I'm stoned and high on cocaine at the same time. I don't have much desire to do cocaine, but I would like to be high. I find that a good laxative of my creativity. I think a joint would likely cure my creative constipation. Or at the very least it would make me feel good. I think. Unless it didn't. And then what?
I was constipated a few days ago. I imagined that everything I'd been eating was cheese and ice cream and onion rings. Not true, but bad enough. I eventually resorted to a glycerin suppository. I first was given one of those by my boyfriend Jack. I thought they were an Israeli thing since he was Israeli, or maybe a Jewish thing. Or maybe a rich person thing, because he was all of those things. Regardless, the rich Israeli Jewish remedy worked on this po' white trash Southern boy and now I'm a convert. I don't use them a lot, but, boy, it did the trick the other day. That bloated, sluggish feeling was gone almost immediately, after I shat. That was only a two-flusher. Today's three-flusher outdid it, but I had some huge meals over the last couple of days, and in the 90 degree weather no less! What was I thinking?
Comfort food. When I'm feeling creatively constipated I just want to eat.
