Depression over writing with nothing much to say

Depression over writing with nothing much to say
11/13/2011
10:36am
She was lagging in being able to jump right in with non-stop writing. This pace of continually having to turn around in the cycle of the new day to start the writing work all over again felt as if it had hit another wall for her. She was wearying this time. How quickly one's moods shifted. But she was trying. She would see if her mood shifted just by starting.

There had been no problem getting ready for the day, though she had not been rising very early the last few days. She sat down to write very soon after breakfast. She typed some reminder notes in hopes of getting a flow going. It had seemed as if she had written all she needed to say on the previous day, so her expectation was that there could not possibly be anything left to say this time. Nothing much besides the work had taken place in her life the day before, so she had nothing much to tell.

She remembered that her plan had been if there was nothing to write about in terms of insights, reflections, and events, then she should work on making up stories. she was dreading to try this. A strategy to possibly use to work up to making up a story for the foxes for instance ( one of the themes for her art classes), was to lay out the 'who, what, where, when, where, how, and why' for a picture she had just made. One could then start by considering some possible problems the character(s) might face. As one dreamed up the possibilities, one might be drawn to one of these over another. Or would just arbitrarily go with one of the possibilities and start. Was this not like life itself? Life presented a situation and one had to make up where one went with that situation, how one dealt with it.

The foxes...... no, she would put that off for the moment.
10:58a break
11:41 resume
Was it Mama Fox or Papa Fox?
Were the two kits brother & brother, sister and sister, or brother and sister, or, only and foundling/adopted?
What problems might this family or the individuals have?
The parents might have concerns with
get along
communicate well
share the work load
pecking order - power/status - who is boss and when
find food
find shelter
keep the young safe
keep themselves safe/ keep danger away
survive the weather - same as shelter?
respond to enormous changes from effects of nature
cope with loss and sorrow
death of spouse
death of child
pleasure of bounty and abundance

All must deal with:
Flaws and strengths of the individuals.
Advantages and disadvantages of their habitat
Problems in the environment

The kits might deal with
getting along
games they played
who was boss - pecking order
loss of a parent or both
loss of a sibling
disappointment
obeying parents
staying safe when parents are out
learning
sharing food
how to hunt
how to fight
what is dangerous
how their world works
And then there might be the relatives, friends, and neighbors.

Here was a list of possibilities. She was not yet ready to go off on a make believe tangent about foxes. It still felt like it was for another day or another medium. She was unwilling to play with the foxes further. At least she had a list of idea starters. They looked like very basic ideas that could be used with many other subjects. She found herself adding a few more things to the list.

12:03p

The problem with noting the time periodically was that one then should not be inserting more text into the writing that came before the time notation.

This day's writing seemed so disjointed. She feared she had hit that wall. She was balking at even the thought of expanding on the things on the two lists she had going. The act of writing had been going around her head too much. She needed some distance from it. Another reason it was so different to type on this machine than to write by hand was the difference of speed. Presumably writing by hand was slower. She was realizing she could not keep up this non-stop pace. She was again doubting the purpose of thiis challenge for herself. She doubted whether she herself would be willing to reread seemingly endless questions and observations of this process of writing in this manner. No matter how much she tried, she did not seem to be able to write without stopping to reflect. She would have to deliberately slow down the typing pace, so that she could get a true stream of consciousness going. No that was impossible. There was no way to catch all the thoughts. and how could there be a writing piece that was crafted stream of consciousness. a writing that was supposed to be a fictional stream of consciousness? a writer would have to be so good at matching one's writing to ones thoughts that they knew how to imitate stream of consciousness because they had observed and captured their own extensively.

The evening before, she had watched a movie about Winston Churchill and his wife, that took place on the eve of World War II. He wrote extensively - 2000 words a day of articles and speeches that he was constantly putting out. Much of it was dictated to his secretary who then transcribed it. He also wrote by hand.

She had been watching another movie over the past few days, about Philipe Petit and his project to walk a wire between the World Trade Center twin towers. She was intrigued byt his thoughts about being an artist, poet, writer, juggler, wirewalker, and actor. He earned his living as a street busker. This work also financed his bigger projects. It was magic to watch how he spoke - his hands mimicking his words the whole time performing a mini dance of whatever he said and all in a flowing style. They were enchanting to watch. She wanted to do that. She had been thinking for years now how she could combine her visual arts work with her impulses to perform for audiences. That was part of what drew her to the teaching work. She often wondered if that was not what she most wanted about it. Was it the teaching or was it the making of some kind of performance art that involved acting, movement, and image making?

She had no dreams of grand projects the way Philipe Petite and Christo did.
Christo was another artist she found fascinating. He too financed his large projects with his many small related art creations. They both dreamt up large wondrous events or magical moments for many people to witness. To participate in the witnessing was to be awestruck at the wonder one was seeing.

12:39p

She ached to stop writing. It felt like she was spinning her wheels. She felt like this was going nowhere. Her heart was not in it this day. But that was part of the process. She had to get through and hopefully more ideas would arise later. She was rebelling against having to rush out thoughts, having to lay them out without properly forming them. Her list of thoughts to explore in writing, to explain, just felt like too much trouble to go through at the moment.

It had hit her the evening before that she could have used the first person in this writing. All she needed to have done was to write diary or journal entries as insets, much like letters that were inside of novels. It seemed too late to change to that format at this stage. Besides she wanted to see what it was like to carry something through in one manner at such length. It this 'novel' turned out to be about nothing, than so be it. Could this be considered a spontaneous novel? She wondered where she could find other examples of such a novel.

She did not read much fiction anymore. The last fiction she could remember reading was the Patrick O'Brien seafaring series about the Master and Commander. Those had taken her away to far away lands, high adventure, another historical time, other ways of life, intrigue, human nature. It was saad to reach the end of the series. Such series with their engaging characters made one wish one could tell stories like that just to make more of such wonderful experiences for people - to sweep others away in a magic the way one's self had been swept away. To be able to move people the way one had been moved

1:04p

She was creeping along word by word. She was worrying ahead of time. If she was this uninspired this day, how would she find anything to write about on the following day? She was trying to hold herself up to the precedent she had set the previous week. She feared it was unrealistic though. Perhaps it was foolish to start an ambitious project that one was not really sure of why one was doing it. That one did not have enough reason to do it, enough belief in its reason for being. She needed to find that which was most important to her. That had been the struggle with her artistic purpose all along. She still had not gotten clear on that. That question drove her crazy. She went around in circles with it.

Why was she an artist? What did she want to do with art? What did she want her art to do? This was not a matter of arbitrarily deciding with a flip of a coin. She had set aside the little figure inventions she'd been quickly turning out almost daily. They had gone by the wayside the past few days as she'd gotten involved with this writing project and then set about working on her commissioned work. She suspected that it was more because she wanted to move on to the next step with them - to do larger works from them - but she was not yet set up for that.
1:16p yay! she'd reached the word count.
much later:
6:15pm
The afternoon after her writing session had been tortured for her. She did not even know what she'd spent the time on. She had hoped to be able to return to the writing to get a little bit ahead for the following day, even though she really had nothing she wanted to write about.

Mostly she had been caught up in feeling depressed at her suspicions that her chosen writing goal was a mistake. It was pointless. She had felt that in the beginning but then gotten so swept up in the effect it had had on her that she ignored her misgivings. She believed the drama and excitement of it. She felt a fool. She had so wanted to carry this through.

She had, however, learned the power of setting a doable yet challenging goal, to take place over a significant time span, presuming that that engagement was what caused these good effects. She could apply this to something else. Here, though, she was nearly halfway through the challenge, halfway to the goal. She would have to give it at least a few more days. Perhaps things would change.

Another idea that she remembered she could have done to turn her own diary or journal keeping into a fiction, was simply to add a fictional character with whom she might carry on a dialogue, an argument, as events and thoughts moved through the days. She had remembered this from a friend's writing. Was it too late to switch to introduce such a form? Probably. The spell of this particular place of nowhere in particular would be broken.
6:31p 1976 words