Sunday November 01, 2009

No NaNoWriMo for You Know Who

I resisted getting into writing for as long as I could. Literature, in particular, wasn’t of interest to me until it became a tool of procrastination in graduate school, when reading fiction became a way of avoiding other work.

Much earlier than that, I practically broke my mother’s heart when she presented me with a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and I asked how long it would take me to read it. Evidently I had missed the point.

To this day, my writing is marred by such impatience. Having worked for a few handfuls of publications, I know that there are two kinds of writers: Those who turn pieces in long and those who turn pieces in short. I am of the latter type to such a degree that I find it difficult to imagine the look and feel inside the minds of the former. Are they gripped by such a flood of inspiration that they just keep running and running—like Forrest Gump—far past the finish line? I have no idea what that’s like. Writing has always been tortuous for me—and thus I’ve sought to keep my exposure to it to a minimum, despite the fact that I’ve been paid to do little else for the past 15 years.

I can vividly remember the horror of writing assignments when I was a kid. The weekend would arrive with a sense of doom and desperation. I would plan to get started on Saturday, but of course this would not happen. I would watch MTV until the videos started repeating and I would feel sick to my stomach. After dinner, I promised myself, I would become a whirling ninja of productivity and churn this baby out like a daisy wheel printer. But then we’d go over to my aunt’s and Love Boat would come on, then Fantasy Island, then Saturday Night Live. Then, ah well, tomorrow is another day.

Sunday morning: Bad sickness. Scheming sets in. Maybe I can get an extension. Maybe I can call-in sick tomorrow, or maybe I could just disappear. Not leave or die, just poof—cease to exist. I still get this feeling sometimes, and I always think of a line from “The Reflex” by Duran Duran.

Don’t want to be around when this gets out.

Imagine Simon Le Bon wearing a majorette costume in your mind. That’s what the fear of writing looks like to me.

Terrifying.

So while I wish you all luck during National Novel Writing Month, I’m afraid I won’t be joining you. Simon just won’t let me.