Writers Blocks

Since I've lived in Los Angeles (it'll be 3 years in October) I haven't written much. I've written some things--a personal essay that was recently published in a little compilation you've never heard of--but not nearly as much as I could have, wish I would have, should have, etc. This left me feeling: guilty, worried, nervous, scared, lazy, frustrated, depressed, etc. The blog wilted. I felt shitty, let us leave it at that. However, the salt on the wound was watching friends work on their career, or move to a new city/apartment, or make advances, or take a step forward, or apply to grad school, or write something--that made me feel alone in my stagnant misery. I realized this a few weeks ago.Morrissey sums it up perfectly:

You see, Michael C. recently moved to NYC to really pursue his acting career. I love Michael. We talk often. When I saw him over Xmas, I could sense that we were both on the cusp of something. At the time I was clearly anticipating his move, but also the feeling that our lives, the two year itch, thetwenty something craziness--was all about to take off/change/I don't know what. So once he was officially in NYC we didn't talk much, and it was more subliminal than intentional--he was moving and I was kind of feeling isolated and weird. I hadn't called him and he called me and called me on it. The verdict: seeing him do while I did not made me feel unworthy and bad. So instead of doing I avoided him and isolated myself from friends who did. Dig?

Talking to my therapist, I talked about how for months, years now, I've tried to figure out why. WHY haven't I been writing more? WHY WHY WHY? Well, what finally got
through to me were my doc's words that the WHY doesn't matter. Stop looking at what you didn't do and/or why you didn't do it, and just move forward. That I could understand, and with that, I think I may have finally freed myself from my non-writing.

Is that what writers block is? I've always visualized the term as a writer at a computer who has forgotten her language. Someone who is trying, but just can't. I don't think I was trying at the time. My process was more dipping my foot in the pool and backing away, but I think I truly dived in last weekend, and it feels really good. I hope the positiveenergy coursing through my veins isn't just the result of a hormonal crimson tide. I don't think it is.

Last Saturday I went to a cafe with Robert (he's good about going on these self-improvement binges and dragging me along) to write for the afternoon. I'm revising my senior year thesis and will submit it to some literary mags; the political theme is appropriate for the moment and the piece is strong--it can really shine with some editing. I also dug out another forgotten short story I worked on last summer, and I'm really going to outline my Ugly Betty spec. I look at myObama poster and think: Yes I Can.

Here's the thing I realized about Obama: he knows who he is and he's true to himself. That's the most important thing in life by the way, and that's why people are drawn to him. There was an excellent article in the New Yorker about this a few weeks ago,
really it was about Hillary Clinton and her view of the presidency, and how it contrasts with that of Obama. "The Choice" from the January 28 issue of The New Yorker sums the difference up perfectly:

“In her personal life, she’s always seemed like she had something to hide,” Dee Dee Myers, who was a top adviser on Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, and who served as White House press secretary for the first two years of his Presidency, said. “She had a difficult father, and she spent a lot of time trying to create an image of a functional family when she could have just said, ‘It’s my family.’ The burden of perfection was upon her, and she carried it into her marriage. There’s always this fear of letting people see what they already know.”

In “A Woman in Charge,” Bernstein writes of Clinton, “Almost always, something holds her back from telling the whole story, as if she doesn’t trust the reader, listener, friend, interviewer, constituent—or perhaps herself—to understand the true significance of events.” A former Clinton Administration official explained his decision to support Obama by urging me to read the two candidates’ autobiographies side by side. Obama’s “Dreams from My Father,” unlike Clinton’s “Living History,” he said, reveals a narrator who has struggled through difficult questions of identity and resolved them, and who, as a result, is comfortable not just with himself but with the complexity and contradiction of the world.


The part of me that was initially voting for Hillary is the part of me that had, and to an extent, still has a great deal in common with her. However, I feel that I'm growing into a person who can own all the parts of my self, understand them, and embrace them. That's the person I want to be, that's the person who decided to pick up the pen again.

That compilation, by the way, is the 20 Somthing Manifesto and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to be a part of it.