Cacoethes Scribendi

I'm inherently lazy. It's true. I had to drag myself from the couch to get into my car and drive down to Starbucks and force myself to write. I'm lazy. I created this blog two months ago but have done nothing with it until now. The first post seems overwhelming; all that blank space.

The purpose, my purpose here, is to write more. As such, this writing blog is separate from my day-to-day Live Journal. And it's deliciously anonymous. On Live Journal I have the tendency to self-edit. I like the feeling of my saving my words to this blog and having them float unread somewhere in Internet-space. It's somehow freeing. I feel like Gossip Girl!

So I've started Nano and it is not going well. First, I started it five days late (oops) because of a weekend trip. Got a sinus headache on the airplane, blah blah blah, couldn't write. Didn't write. Watched Top Model and What Not To Wear marathons on the way home. What can ya do.

And here I sit now, a sugar-free gingerbread latte in hand, with no excuses and nothing else to do but write, and I find that my output is not existent. What happened to my cacoethes scribendi, my writer's itch? I need to get that fire back. I've Nano-ed since November of 2004 and have found the month intoxicating. From the outside it seems so cozy; blustery winds and darkening days outside and inside, in this well-lit little cafe or study, the writer, with a cup of spicy tea and maybe fingerless gloves (don't own a pair, but still) and a cashmere throw tossed around her shoulders, tippity tapping into the night. But it's not like that, is it ever?

The first year of Nano I was caught up in politics. No metaphor there, was literally swept away with the fervor of the election. I based my novel on it. I woke up at 5 and drove in the dark to the gym to work out before commuting an hour and a half to work. I showered at the gym and the month still smells like creme brulee lotion, sugary sweet. I sat upright in a chair at Barnes and Noble with my old laptop perched on my lap and typed for five hours straight. The end result wasn't good but it was finished and I was pleased.

The second year was when I fumbled. I got so caught up in my plot. I wanted it to be "the one"; too much pressure, too much at stake. I wanted to make it perfect and I gave up. I was busy at a new job, etc. All excuses and I knew it.

The third year, last year, my first year of graduate school, I was determined. I listened to Chris Baty talk at my local Border's and had him autograph my copy of his book. I learned from the previous years' mistakes. I finished my 50K words.

This year I can see I'm making the same mistakes as year 2. The thing is, I've wanted writing to be my career for a while now. And I'm a bit out of careers. I've worked in publishing. I had a small stint at teaching high school earlier this year and hated it. I'm kind of running out of things to do with the English language. I want to write. I want to teach writing at colleges. I was lucky enough to get a job teaching one class at a college this semester and I love it, want to continue doing it. But to do this, I need some output, some words on the screen. And this is where the pressure is coming in.

I planned, this summer, while surrounded by my chattering aunts and godmother and grandmother, to write about my family. Like the Portuguese-American Amy Tan. But it's kind of a downer, writing these sad stories. It's making me not want to write. I need a change of plot, a change of something. I don't want to quit!

So that concludes my first blog. More to come, hopefully more "writerly" ones than this. BTW, I borrowed the term "blue stocking" and "cacoethes scribendi" from early American writer extraordinarie Catharine Sedgwick: the original blue stocking (is it stockinged?) girl. I picture myself in that time period, hopefully like her or, later, like Charlotte Bronte, blue ink-tinged fingers, wiping them on my pristine stockings and dress (always making a mess, easy to picture), chomping on apples like Jo March and writing writing writing into the dark.