Lauren v. Lauren

My history with writing is not unlike any other deep personal relationship.  There has been the inevitable periods of estrangement and the times of unbridled passion.  There's always the doubt, the fights, the horrific self loathing, and then the heartwarming moments where everything clicks.


When I speak, the edit button is usually dormant.  I typically suffer from word vomit, where I speak first and think later.  I'm not as free with my information as some people I know (and applaud), but it can be a little harsh at times.  I'm loud and profane.  There's also not usually an off switch.  When I write, the opposite is true.  There's a giant, bright red edit sign searing its way into my brain.  I've typed and deleted a sentence nine or ten times in the past.


For those reasons, I am calling this post Lauren vs. Lauren.  I'm constantly over-editing and over-analyzing everything I commit to hard drive.  I do this to the point that I become frustrated and have to walk away.  This behavior is not extremely conducive to a writing life.  I've actually gone back through a chapter to edit and have deleted an entire page.  I've handwritten chapter upon chapter and when it is finally committed to a word document, it looks nothing like what I'd previously written.


In my everyday life, it's inevitable that I'm going to piss someone off.  It's the opposite when I write.  I make every effort to not make waves.  I'll write something and find myself going back through it questioning whether setting a novel in Harrisburg is going to put people off if it's not exactly like "real" Harrisburg.  If I set a murder spree in the aforementioned fictional version of Harrisburg, is that going to affect tourism?  Are people going to be able to separate fiction from reality?  It may seem like a foolish notion, but how many people in the country have pursued careers in forensics based on what they see in CSI?


I also rarely let people read my stuff.  I think this is one of the reasons I'm making a commitment to this blog.  The more I get used to people reading my thoughts, the closer I'll be to actually opening myself up to the world of peer review in terms of writing.  My aunt, an English teacher, has been asking to read my work for years.  My denial of people has gotten to the point that my mother thinks that I've murdered her in one of my novels because I won't let her see them.  I will literally rather shut the computer down and lose my document than risk the person standing behind me being able to see what I'm writing.


I'm hyper-paranoid about my work.  I took a couple of creative writing courses in college, and all of the coursework was very well received.  I'm a storyteller by nature, I dream in vivid details and my memory is borderline photographic.  I have no issues with public speaking.  The idea, however, of public reading makes me absolutely fret.  I had a professor in college that used to read my papers to himself in front of me and then go over them with me.  Sounds helpful, right?  Wrong.  I'm sure that man thought I had some kind of condition because I spent most of my session with him in the hallway or the bathroom.  I simply would walk the hallways rather than sit there and wonder what he was thinking while reading my words.  I think I honestly thought that he was going to throw it back in my face and declare it drivel.  He didn't.  He actually always had really great things to say, but to this day I am still uncomfortable thinking about it.


It's not a lack of confidence.  I'm fairly confident about my vocabulary.  I think I write quite well.  I like words and word origins.  I have five different books about the origins of cliches and phrases.  I've got nineteen different dictionaries.  Believe me, I am in NO WAY an expert.  I have been corrected, more than once.  I correct people too.  I will own that.  People that don't know the difference between their/there/they're make me absolutely insane.  These damn little girls on Facebook that can't form a sentence to save their lives make my fucking eyes bleed.  I accept this about myself.  I'll own it as a character flaw.  I'm usually not trying to be an asshole, and sometimes I am.  A friend of mine points it out, so now I do it to her just to get under her skin.


I use writing as catharsis.  I've had a horrible headache all day long and as I write this, I can feel the tension melting out of my shoulders.  I'm smiling.  The sound of my dogs snoring and the weird reverberation in my television speakers is not bothering me.  I'm trying to make myself better and clear this terrible block I've been suffering from.  I hope you guys dig it. 

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.....