Tedious Is Not My Forte

Tedious, tiresome or monotonous, deadly dull, and honestly, that is the life of a writer. 

Writing happens in fits and starts, in between, it’s all about editing out the crap, coming back from our self-induced distractions, and of course multiple trips to the refrigerator. Back and forth I walk from the office to kitchen, kitchen to office, office to kitchen not unlike the cursor that moves stoically across the page. 

I emulate the actions of my mind or is it my hands that emulate the actions of my body?

Most of the time I open the refrigerator, look around, finding nothing of interest, I close the door, and leave. Returning to my computer, I open the page, browse the unappealing verbiage, close the computer, and leave. I might need therapy? 

Why do we do it?

What is the impetuous for keeping that blasted cursor moving across the page? 

Maybe I have this deep-seated hunger to reveal a tiny slice of reality. I reach for the dusty curtains, coughing as I push back the material that blocks your view, for a moment I’m blinded by the light that floods the room. I’m trying to show you something, I keep looking for the right words to describe what I see but I have to fight to get outside of myself. Painstakingly I crawl closer and closer to the truth. Knees bleeding.

No wonder writers drink. 

I wrap my words in so much shit if I washed away most of it, the rawness of what is left would only scratch the surface of what is true. I never fully arrive. It’s agonizing, like rashes, they itch,  and I scratch them until they bleed but the paresthesia is never satisfied. You know what I mean?

Some days I delete everything I write. Not one word is worth repeating. I toss my notebook across the room, it’s as if I am rejecting myself, and I’m thrown back to elementary school where it was a daily fight to belong.

It’s part of the deal, it’s the burden we carry, gutted by depletion we struggle on. 

Then there are the good days when everything flows as if a gentle stream trickling through a secret garden. These are the stakes that keep everything in place. But I’m camping on private land, signs posted “No Trespassing,” and this is how I understand grace. It’s undeserved. 

Today I’m writing with the computer on my lap, still in bed, with a cup of lukewarm coffee at my side. I’m already late with this post, I wrote the words above yesterday, I was clearly in a mood. Today, I’m picking through the words as if a pizza with anchovies that I asked for on the side. I can’t figure out where I was going and why I ordered an entire pie for myself?

Details, land rights, pulled up stakes? What the hell. Yesterday I had a direction but clearly, I’ve misplaced the map and now I’m standing in the middle of a post and have no idea where it’s going. Shit.

I slip out of the warm covers, make the incredibly short trek to the kitchen, but this time I refuse to open the refrigerator, I have the contents memorized, and besides there is nothing there that will satisfy my craving. I need a different sort of propellant. 

I consider crawling back to my room just to be dramatic but I think better of it as the floors haven’t been mopped in a while.

Slipping into the still warm covers, I go back to the first line, which is usually where I stash my agenda and read it again, “Tedious, tiresome or monotonous, deadly dull, and honestly, that is the life of a writer.”

It’s just not my forte.

When I’m not writing for Across the Board, I’m Living in the Gap, drop by anytime.