Ideas Can Turn Against Us

A real bad night. I don't know what it was all about. Maybe I missed something. It started alright and 

then I started thinking too much about situations for stories and I ended up be able to think of lots of them. But they were more like I Love Lucy than short stories. Pointless plots. Some of them were OK but not things I wanted to write about.

A man alone working in his wood shop, his leg snaps because he's got cancer of the bone and now it's just him trying to pull himself across the gravel parking back to his house to get to the phone. Not sure who to root for there. The ideas went downhill from there. I was stuck in that loop for quite a while and then I woke up around 3:30 and my nose and throat hurts and I'm chilled and I don't feel right.

Then I started coughing and trying to clear my throat. Seemed to go on for a long time. I was awake like that til after Sue got up about 5:40. I tried to get back to sleep and I got a little more but, for the most part, I just laid there.

I have to do something constructive with my sleeping situation. It's just too hard to get up in the morning. It should be this tough. I think it's also contributing to my not writing. It has been a long time since I've gone this long without turning out a short story. I was starting to get good at it so this is no time to stop. What does it mean if I feel like I'm getting better at writing but I'm not writing? I have nothing to write about. So write about nothing. That sounds like a good idea. People love to read about nothing.

Who am I kidding? No one is reading anything I write anyway. That's not the point. The point is that I want to write, so then write. Right? Jesus, why is this so hard? 

Instead of writing now, I'm looking around at gimmicks, doodahs that I can add on to check my writing and make it better. Which obscures the fact that I've got nothing to check if I don't write. The answer to the puzzle is, write! Write until I find something to write about. It's the only way to do it. the only way to make words go down onto the paper or the screen. 

More later,