Cancel the Day

Cancel the day.
If there is one thing I hate about being a writer, it’s being uninspired or stuck. I know my story. I know where it’s going. I know how it’s supposed to get there. What I don’t know is how to get my head to be quiet enough to actually sit down and make it happen.
 
So many distractions. Facebook and email are easy to ignore. The pain in my back and legs after electro-therapy this morning, that’s bloody persistent. The nagging bad conscience that I have gained weight while Emilie has been sick, that’s not easy to shut up, either.
 
Insecurities. Writing in Danish is hard, I’m not used to it. Should I write in English, then? And there we go, I’m browsing web pages on how to find an international agent and convince him or her to accept a manuscript. Meanwhile, my novel isn’t writing itself.
 
The more bothered by pain I am, the easier I get distracted. It’s an established pattern. The mornings I wake up near pain free I get all sorts of creative works done. The mornings I fall out of bed with a groan, well, not much is going to happen. It annoys the hell out of me to be dependent like that on something I cannot control. I ought to be able to overcome, to have some backbone, some self discipline — but I’m not.
 
I wrote half a page today. It’ll have to do. The rest of today is cancelled, enjoy.

How Do Kids Talk?

That’s not what I’m writing. I miss that old boy though.

I used to write. Every day, on any scrap of paper I could find. I knew that most of what I wrote was utter tripe, romantic drivel with no substance and quite a lot of it ‘liberated’ from other writers’ books. I had to. I always knew that some day I was going to be a writer.

Well, I’m not a writer yet. I’m off the pain medication that forced me to stop, though, and I can feel the need to write trickle back, a little stronger every day. After a four year break I started writing my fan fiction again — I’ve almost finished it! I am laying out the bare bones for a ghost story of my own and I am trying to not let the white paper intimidate me too much.

I’m realizing that writing in English for three decades may not have done me any favours. I learned to read on the books of Kipling and Captain Marryat in their Danish translations. My written Danish is… old. I am realizing I have no damn idea how today’s kids speak. At least not the Danish kids. I know what they sound like in English, from the internet and from online games. But Danish teenagers?

Uhhh.

Maybe I should just write in English as I’m used to. Just seems… wrong, somehow, to write about Danish folklore and legend, in Denmark, in English.

It’s funny how the mind makes up blocks and hurdles to stop one from pushing on. I’ve written maybe three paragraphs today but I have deleted at least a thousand. No one talks like that. Does that word even still exist? How do I make this kid sound fifteen — not ten and not twenty, but fifteen!

Writing is hard. But so immensely satisfying all the same. Those three paragraphs are -good-.