An Exercise on the Inability to Write

"I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing"
-Stephen King

I have writer's block with NANOWRIMO.
Maybe it has to do with the fact I've never written almost twenty pages of text in four days...normally I have writer's block the second week of NANOWRIMO...which is the agreed upon date the noveling vacation ends and skies turn very dark and cloudy.

But maybe it has more to do with that Stephen King quote.

When I look in the mirror I see eyes that are more tired than a twenty-three year old has a right to be. It's not like I survived a genocide, been through a war or had to make unbearable sacrifices...I've met people who have done all that. I've seen the pain they still carry, the pain under their skin and the scars which will never leave their body.

What is it I am afraid of?
Would I be so indecisive if I would have been born in another time and another place?
Why do I feel that I NEED the affirmation and validation from other people?
People who are just as human and prone to error as I am?
Furthermore why do I feel the need to hold people's mistakes over their heads and act as if I am somehow different, somehow special enough to practice the art of perfection?

Writing is so hard for me because it is so personal.

I'm writing fantasy, elves and magic, all that stuff but I can't help but notice when bits of my character and personal thoughts slip into my characters. It can be downright disturbing when two characters use my own words to have a conversation I had only a few weeks ago.

Most of my life decisions I have made and all of the ones I never did have this one common theme together: fear.

I think people are afraid of art, even disgusted at the thought of art because of the fact it has to come from the soul. True artistic expression, regardless of medium, is almost always a picture of a soul if not a negative showing the opposite. Art is always reviled by religion and government gone astray because of how 'dangerous' it is to be an individual who expresses thyself...because it requires free thought and to actually discover who you really are as a person.

Art is dangerous, just as dangerous as being able to laugh is. True freedom is the ability to be so free of the horrors of your circumstances that you can not just laugh at evil in the face but you can hold up a mirror to reflect back how distorted it is.

Maybe part of my problem in life, why I have such an indecisive flair about me is I do not know which 'great battle' is mine to fight. I flirt with pacifism a lot so it's not like I can join the military or a fight club. It almost feels ironic to say the battle I have is a spiritual one...it's finding who I am...because honestly I have no idea who that man in the mirror is.

It is so easy to act pretentious and pretend I have my act together.

That is something that I despise the most in religious and political figures and conversely the sort of characteristics I hate the most in me.

Spiritual hypocrisy goes far beyond a televangelist who steals money from poor widows and ministers who denounce the homosexual agenda as being the crux of America's social ills while on the weekends they meet gay prostitutes for reasons that are less than noble.

Any action, any decision which ignores a human being that is suffering is hypocrisy and anti Christ. I know people who claim that presidents were/are the Antichrist when the true spirit of Anti Christ can be just as close as the closest church building or worse, in my own heart.

Maybe I'm afraid of being found out as a hypocrite, not by people who are willing to make excuses for me but by a God who is infinitely loving and compassionate. Maybe I feel terror at the mere mention of Grace because it means everything I've achieved is a castle of sand that I didn't even help put together.

Writing is one of the few ways in which I try to keep myself afloat, as if I am afraid of simply letting go of every little thing and just learning what forgiveness and grace really mean. I suppose it might be easier to just say writing and pride are two egotistical idols I'm more than happy to sacrifice everyone at, just as you know, I get what I want in the end.

Moving from this tomb would require effort, it would require the risk of failing...it would mean interacting with other people who are hurting and need love. It means realizing that the story of life wasn't penned just for my pleasure...but somehow, in some impossible manner the love of Jesus makes participation not just possible...but soul saving.

I write in a pale imitation of not just the writer's I adore but in a vapid imitation of the God who deliberately put this lunatic together.

I dream of places far beyond this room because it is the same God that put the stars in motion that stirs my heart. The same God who took a chance on something as accident prone as humanity that sends me a Muse to whisper inspiration and set deadlines that are only slightly unreasonable.

I can dance because I'm free, sing off key because the music is loud enough and pen a potentially crappy novel because two things I'll never run out of is grace and the ability to go back and fix a mistake...when I finally catch it.