Sunday, December 5, 2010

Dry Spells

The dreaded dry spell.

The time we feel shriveled, bloated, wrinkled beyond belief, unable to produce anything worth anything, all the while feeling unbelievable pressure to do something.

Sort of like...having a period for the rest of your life.

This is what you sign up for when you decide to write: Heat waves. Flashes. Tears. Moodiness. The 'don't even think of touching me' lack of desire. Semi-psychotic behavior that has no true physiological basis.

Only it's not on a monthly schedule and there's no menopause to free you from it happening over. And over. And over.

But I think dry spells are good for us. And I don't think they're dry at all.

Sure you might not be putting thousands of words on the page a day. Or have any flashes of inspiration. Your semi-psychotic behavior might drive you to rewrite the same chapter forty times and then burn the pages in some ceremonial expulsion of demons. You'll probably do a little bit of crying. And 'have a happy period' will have NOTHING to do with fixing the punctuation in a sentence.

But you will be taking things in.

You will find yourself listening to things you might not have heard otherwise in your rush to get words on the page.

And without that...you wouldn't have anything to write.

3 comments:

  1. I'm not sure about the period thing, but I know what you mean about the dry spells.

    Since I started writing, I've been up and down like a whack-a-mole on skittles. The lows may really suck, but the highs you get when you read back a good scene are worth it.

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  2. Very true--dry spells are important for the writing, even if they're not quite as satisfactory as churning out thousands of words a day.

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  3. This is so funny because it's true. My poor husband.

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