I Love "Writing"; I Just Hate to WRITE

I know many of the Angry Nerd's readers (well, many might not quite be the right word; how about "several of the Angry Nerd's handful of readers"?) have been asking me lately why I haven't been posting much lately. I've wondered this myself, as I go through these occasional periods of not posting despite having plenty of material that I could be putting out there. Well I think I finally figured it out, and the answer is this post's title: I love "writing", but I just hate to WRITE...

So what the heck does that mean, you ask? Well, my experiences, background, personal history, the people I know, the people I cross paths with, conversations I overhear (eavesdrop on), things I read or see on television or Internet, etc. provide me with a never ending source of ideas to write about...only that "writing" mostly takes place in the grey matter between my ears. Even though I carry a small notepad with me almost everywhere I go, ostensibly to write stuff down to use in this blog and in the collection of short stories that are all in various stages of incompletion, about all that ever gets written in them are occasional one-liners of blog/story ideas, or maybe a quote or two of something I've overheard. Otherwise, everything is all "written out" in my head, where it rattles around for weeks or months (or in a few cases, years) before I get around to sitting down to my computer to transfer my words into a form that someone else beside me might some day be able to read. And even then, it still takes longer than it needs to, due to distractions or just plain procrastination. See, like most writers, I suffer from writer's block; the difference with me is that my writer's block is rarely a mental one, but almost always a physical one. There's just something in me that makes me not want to physically write or type all these words that fill my head. Come to think of it, there may be some underlying mental thing that makes me so reluctant to put my stories in physical form - or maybe it's just plain laziness - but in any case, it tends to get words out of my head and into a word program file.

This is obviously not a good situation for someone who claims to want people to read and know the inner workings of his mind (or at the very least, the projections of "cleverness" he likes to convince himself he possesses). I even thought about paying someone to type my shit for me. That, however, was an idea with two major flaws: one, I would probably have to pay someone (I mean, unless I found someone who was so enamored of my brilliance that they would do it for free - OK, stop laughing - or, maybe finally found my true soulmate who would do it for me just because she loved me so much - yeah, I know, that's even funnier); and two, in dictating my stories to someone, it kinda means I would actually have to talk to that person -- ehhhh, I don't think so...of course, I guess I could dictate the stories into a recorder and have someone do dictation off of that, but, really, has anyone really listened to what my recorded voice sounds like? They'd be asleep before they finished typing the first paragraph...

 The good thing, though, is that since I started writing this blog, this condition of not wanting to write my "writings" has changed from being a seemingly permanent one to one that is more cyclical, or perhaps more accurately, like a see saw. The way it works is like this:

1. Write a couple of blog posts and additions to my assorted short stories. Get tired of physically having to write stuff down. The see saw slams down hard on the side of no physical writing.
2. After a period of time (a week, week and a half), people start asking when the next post is coming. "Leave me alone," I think. "I don't feel like writing" - meaning, I don't feel like physically sitting down and transferring the next post(s) from my brain - where they have already been completed - to my computer.
3. After a little more time passes, the questions about when the next post is become more frequent and insistent. Now instead of feeling annoyed, I start feeling guilty and lapsing into a brand self-flagellation that I am particularly good at. The see saw starts to give a little and rise up towards level.
4. Finally, I the combination of guilt and desire to show off what's been rolling around in my head rises to a level that is greater than my hatred of typing. The tipping point is reached, the see saw slams down hard the other way, and you loyal Angry Nerd devotees get to be dazzled by my brilliance until such point as I decide that I've written enough and I'm tired and the whole thing starts over again.

I say all of that to tell you you that if you want to know what the hell's been up with me, be warned: you're about to get hit with as much Angry Nerd crap as I can stand to spew for the time being. Enjoy it while it lasts...