365 days of being a writer: day 54

Have you head of the "Worthless Word for the Day"? It's a yahoo group that sends out periodic messages (not quite daily) with worthless words. The last one I got was "goditorium." Goditorium is a slang word that has appeared in press and print and is presumed to mean, "a church, perhaps a huge and gaudy one".

You can sign up for a worthless email of your own, here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wwftd/

I got up late again. My weariness is taking too much toll on everything. Something, as they say, has got to give.



The internet and all its attendant apps and toys makes for a whirling buzz of constant words. There are stories and epithets and footnotes and pledges happening all over about everything. Lately, because of my doubts about my fortitude or and conviction or and sanity, I have been "hearing" more and more about how writing can only be the career for those who can do nothing else.

Well so far I have certainly shown myself incapable of any OTHER career, so I am--what--halfway there?

George Orwell says, "One would never undertake [the writer's life] if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality."

I certainly don't efface, about face, or any other kind of -face my personality here, but in my writing-writing, I think I do. My essay on starlings (one hopes dearly) isn't all weepy and sad with self-pity and melodrama.

How can I get out from under my bad attitude and ego and sense of, if not entitlement, than at least deserving of a goddamn break for a change? Right now, I'm trying. I keep the pen moving across the page, or fingers across the keys as the case may be, but I can't focus for more than 500 words at a time. My essays sit unfinished, while I polish gemmy little flash pieces. Twitter and the fun games there don't help. Neither does Facebook, boingboing, Gawker, or HuffPost, frankly.