Lauren v. A Challenge

Hi!  I'm Lauren.  I work in the medical field as a Surgical Scheduling Coordinator (I schedule surgery for an outpatient surgery center and manage the OR schedule for eight different operating rooms).  My job consists of a lot of somewhat tedious data entry combined with a lot of numbers committed to memory peppered with with a ridiculous amount of problem solving.  I'm pretty good at what I do and I take pride in my work, but it is in no way my passion.


My passion is writing, and it has been since I was a kid.  I wrote my first book when I was seven or eight years old.  It was twelve pages on loose leaf paper that I later mounted to construction paper.  I bound the book with yarn and masking tape.  I took it to a sleepover and read it to the other eight year old girls.  I've been in love ever since.


I, of course, have fallen in and out of love many times.  I still do.  There are days of incredible joy and satisfaction.  There is painful self doubt.  There are periods of time during which I'd like to run, screaming, from the computer (or run over it with a lawnmower).  Sometimes I can sit down and write for hours and hours on end.  I don't sleep, I don't eat, and I barely speak.  Then there are the days (okay, months) laden with the absolute torturous hell known as writer's block.


I have an incredible ability to make blocks last longer than it would take your average person to read the entire Outlander series (Each book runs about 600 pages and there are 6 of them).  I fall into a block and won't let myself out of it.  I manage to convince myself that there must be a reason for the block.  Maybe writing isn't my destiny, and the block is the result of the universe trying to tell me something.  Call me ridiculous.  I'll own that.  When I've been blocked for weeks at a time, nothing that I have ever written is worth a damn to me.  At that point, I suck.  If only my passion were surgical scheduling.


I've called myself a writer for as long as I can remember.  I've had a long love affair with reading since I learned how.  I've been obsessed with words and language for a very long time.  I would love to learn every spoken language in the world, but let's be real, no one has that kind of time.  I would love to spend days devouring books about the roots of all words in our vernacular, but alas, life happens.  


The one good thing about being blocked, for me, is that I become a great deal more social.  I spend less time alone in my room or my office.  I also tend to read a great deal less when I'm blocked.  Reading other people's words just remind me that I'm not doing what I should be doing.


I do read more writing books when I'm blocked, perhaps hoping that someone has the perfect answer regarding how to rid myself of this particular albatross.  I research a great deal, as well, just in case. I like research because it often yields actual results and it makes me feel somewhat productive. 


I've decided to use this blog as a way to follow the advice of every writing book on the market.  They all say the best way to beat a block is to write every day.  They all spout the importance of committing something to paper (or hard drive).  One book I read asked me to sit down and write one page every day.  If I didn't use my page to actually write something of substance then I should use the time to fill that page with excuses as to why I hadn't written anything.  I can imagine the tedium of writing excuses day after day would inspire anyone to do the actual work.  For a little while, we're going to count this blog as my page.  Basically, I'm hoping to write my way out of writer's block.  If it helps me, that's fantastic.  If it doesn't, then at least I wrote my page.


Here goes nothing.....