A Writerly Dilemma

Tags

blockade, clamshells, correct reflection, Echo and Narcissus, ego, fool’s gold, honesty, Kali, MySpace angles, narcissism, pearls, post-PTSD memory, rambling, Samskaras, slash and burn, unfinished business, Writer's block, WWF smackdown

Having another one of those writer’s blocks thingies.

Got heaps of posts at about 70-90% readiness, yet… it’s like extracting fingernails, getting them over the line. It’s a little bit like a WWF smackdown, but neither side is winning.

This time though, I know what the blockade is called. Definitely not a shortage of ideas or words. Nor time – ha! Got plenty of that in a job that calls for me to come in for certain hours, but actually do very little. That in itself, can be somewhat paralysing, and draws up my tendencies to indulge in laziness.

But actually, I am writing. This current working file in Word (I group them by the month) sees me on page 10 of 24. I am writing post number 7 for the month, but ahead of this one, there’s many, many pages of unfinished business.

And here’s why.

I’ve been pondering the nature of my writings, and worrying if they are just a little too self-involved/narcissistic/painting myself as the heroine or victim/not honest enough/rambling/telling stories for the sake of the telling/without a point… and so on.

Am I just writing to feed my ego?

Presently on the go, are three strands of story. Two of them have remained loose ends for most of this year. I’ve yet to sew them up and make neat seams as my mother does when she knits sweaters for my nieces.

If that’s even possible! But at least some semblance of finished. Finished for now, would be close enough…

And I fear that I’ve perhaps presented MySpace angles of my stories instead of representing things more neutrally.

Some stories I’ve written purely out of raw, hardcore, seething, ragged, painful need. The kinds of stories that, if not written and released, eventually work to implode your vital organs or make you desperately ill.

But the ones I’m writing now, they aren’t like that.

For example, the stories from earlier in my life. At the time they were very traumatic and painful and I know they inform my relationships with men and many other important decisions in how my samskaras operate.

BUT they don’t eat at me like acid. Not like the stories of assault, PTSD and depression did (and heck, who knows, there might even be more of them in there somewhere?).

And the stories I’ve humourously titled my ‘spiritual quest’ – I know they’re related somehow too, but they’re not urgent.

And I wonder if that lack of urgency makes the pointy end of truth, the poke you in the ribs and soft tissues of your body kind of truth, harder to uncover?

I’m almost finished writing the next part – sort of – but I look at all the details and it’s like I can’t see the fool’s gold from the real stuff. So much going on, what’s important? What’s not? What’s just me rambling for the sake of it?

So I edit with my slash and burn tactics. I am after all, one of Kali’s own and I wield my spurious (perhaps) red pen with detached abandon. But then, do I remove too much? That bit I thought was a little goofy or unrelated, is it really related and if so, how can I write about it in a way that counts?

Then I say to heck with it! And I write some more, letting floodgates fall away and the polluted garbage flow back to source, atop the waterways that support the real stories.

But real stories aren’t the waterways. Instead they are pearls inside the carelessly scattered clamshells littering the sandy waterway floors. I dive time and again, and fumble with my diver’s knife, prising one open and then the next to find many that are seemingly empty.

And just maybe, another fragment of the story is revealed. Or I miss it all together and I write about other things that don’t ring with truth. And I fail to notice the shining gem that will undoubtedly sing brightly once liberated and polished.

Dimmed by a shoddy post-PTSD memory (which is still not that fantastic) and also with time, they all look alike.

After all, these are clamshells I’ve allowed to close and accumulate, never thinking til now I’d have to open them ever again. They seemed unimportant at the time. Are they unimportant still?

Perhaps…

But then, what would I know? I don’t have a bird’s eye view. I can only tell my story from what I think I understand, and even then, that’s surely not the full picture.

More than anything though, I hope I do not write with a kind of avarice, feeding that part of me that, as a yogini I seek to dismantle. For that would just be folly, right?

Correct reflection I fear, is what’s missing right now…

~Svasti