Getting naked, and other mixed metaphors

Time flies when you're putting off writing.

Yesterday I sat down to write - a blog post, an assignment for my flash fiction course, a short story, anything - and ended up cleaning the apartment. Vacuumed, dusted, swept, washed dishes, did a load of laundry, folded my boyfriend's clothes. Whatever I could do to keep myself from facing a blank page.

My brain teems with ideas, especially when I run. I wish I could carry a pen and pad on my runs; just when I'm trying hardest to zone out and find some mental quiet, characters and quips and odd things slosh around in my head like a kid playing in a bathtub too full. But as good as they sound in my head, when I come home, cool down, and prepare to write them into being, the kid pops open the drain and gets out to watch Spongebob. There's a kink in the hose. The water runs dry.

Ideas can feel like such innocent, pristine things. You cherish them like your perfect children while they're still in your head. And to write them wrong, to assign them any sort of imperfection with your words, would be a massive injustice to them. I don't know what it feels like to be a failed parent, but I imagine it's a little like that.

Writing can also be like getting naked. Not in the fun way, no - it's like stripping down to take a hard look at your imperfections. Publishing something you've written, or having it workshopped, is like getting naked in front of a bunch of strangers so they can take a hard look at your imperfections. And most of them can't ever be fixed. Tightening up your language can help your writing the same way makeup can help you look younger, but you can't change your essence. I'll never change my wider-than-Texas hips, or that I'm not actually blonde. And knowing what kind of writer, or body type, you are doesn't necessarily help you feel more secure.

If you write, I don't have to tell you how scary writing is. You know what it's like to look at a stark, white page and try to fill it with words that will charm, excite, or move your readers, take them somewhere they've never been, make them cry, make them want to change. And you know how heartbreaking it is to fail. You got naked for them, showed them everything about yourself, gave them your heart, and they weren't impressed.

Why don't I update this blog more often, you ask? Why didn't I write all the stories I had queued up in my head for the summer, that I was once pretty excited about?

Well, now you know. Nobody wants to end up a naked, failed parent in a bathtub with some rowdy kid. That's just a bad place to be.