Advice from Brain: Write That Book So You Can Fearlessly Face The Cardboard

** Warning: the following may contain triggers for the bug averse**

I know how my roguish brain works, yet I resist ….

When I had the ‘luxury’ to focus entirely on writing, it was a wonderfully prolific time. I wrote novels, short stories, articles in local or online magazines, and dabbled in restaurant reviews. I attended conferences and even spoke at a few of them. I did a handful of book signings—meeting readers was a joy and the only part of that I looked forward to. Along with Angie Ledbetter, we became Publishing Editors of the Rose & Thorn Literary E-zine and published many fine writers, and I still remain proud of how we gave so many new and emerging writers and poets a home for their gorgeous works.

Brain didn’t have time to resort to its shenanigans. But since I have not been writing, it’s turned wacky-doodle-dooooooo!

Maybe you think, “Yeah, yeah. The idea that writers are weird, blah blah blah.”

Okay then—it’s not that I’m sometimes (usually) weird because I’m a writer but I’m sometimes (usually) weird because I’m not writing.

My brain sucks up all manner of idea, thought, passersby comments, road signs, dreams, a commercial about Raid (ugh, WHERE IS THE REMOTE? Fast forward!), a Facebook post, something on the floor that turned out to be a Craisin, things my lunatic Maw-Maw told me in the 60s, etcetera.

And my brain likes to fling all this shit about inside my skull willy nilly and makes things a bit difficult to manuever.

I gave my brain a good talking to this morning while walking my wonky-toothed chihuahua mutt. During these heart-to-brain talks, Brain waits patiently for me to finish, giving a few Uh huhs and huh you don’t says and Mmm hmmms. And then it starts up all over again.

I can silence it (temporarily) by saying, “redirect.” Not REDIRECT DANG IT BRAIN YOU ARE DRIVING ME CRAZY SO REDIRECT REDIRECT REDIRECT!” as that only makes my brain go Supernova. So, simply, quietly, serenely: “redirect.”

Some days Brain is exhausting and I could write a book on that, uh, but I won’t. Other days are rather benign but still annoying.

Take yesterday. I went to Big Orange Letters discount store and bought a few things that cost less. Not everything is about The Great Wizard of ‘Zon. Is not!

Sometimes I need to walk around where other people are like-minded-shopping and there are bright lights and shiny things. So I have my purchases in their bags (my apologies to the Earth) because I forgot my reusable bags in my car and people are not so patient to wait for me to fetch them. Once home I take the stuff up the stairs to my living area and suddenly the Raid commercial that I didn’t fast forward through quick enough fwaps me upside the head.

What if there is something in these bags or this carboard box or …. I have always had a strong phobia to vermin bugs. I am also repelled by the commercials,  the billboards, the signs, anything depicting their awfulness.

So, all the stuff went to my front porch to be inspected. Let me tear off the wrapper from the paper towels and look down the tube with a flashlight and check along that attached seam where you tear the first one and put the plastic in the outside bin that is for anything mailed to me from the Great Wizard of ‘Zon, and then take that other item out of the cardboard and put that cardboard in the outside bin, because what could be hiding in cardboard?

Now, I may never have thought of things in cardboard if not for walking in my Cove and Mike The Vermin Guy stops to say hi as he often has when he’s looking after the vacation rentals for whatever problem that has wrought, and that particular day he says, “Don’t take any packaging shipped to you inside your house. Stuff is loaded on ships and no telling what crawls in and then it sets round the war’houses and …” and on he went but I blacked out.

I put my parchment paper in the freezer. Why? Because if something is hiding in the cardboard, and Mike The Vermin Guy said something about cardboard, the something will freeze, and after maybe a week or two, whatever it is surely would be dead.

“But Kathryn, what if there is something and it crawls into the freezer?” It’ll freeze, okay? I mean, let’s be reasonable here (and as I wrote that I laughed out loud).

Have I ever brought home vermin from a store? I’ve never once seen a trace. But! Years ago I was visiting Louisiana and with the muggy climate there, the crawly vermin thrive in it; they flock in the trees like birds and great hoards will fly in formation and straight into your face. So I went to a grocery store, brought in my bag to the hotel room, and out crawled a vermin bug.  I spent 2 hours searching until it met its much overdue demise.

Hence, I was late to my conference session. I must have looked haunted, my hair standing on end, because someone asked, “You look so pale and troubled. You okay?” I answered, “I cannot ever speak of it! Oh, the horror!”

Now, everyone who knows me knows I love my critters and will carefully move a spider or wasp or squirrel or moth or bird, or even a crider that was in my bathtub (cross between a cricket and a spider – they jump!) out of my house to the outdoors. I have big ol’ bears lumber onto my porch who stare at me through my window and I nonchalantly shoo them away.

But if something verminy were to crawl out of a package, I will go apoplectic and it will DIE DIE DIE and then I’ll pass out.

(redirect)

But, you say, is Mike The Vermin Guy reliable? The horrors he’s likely seen must take its toll on his mind. Relaaaax.

Well, few years ago I brought in a box from the Great Wizard of ‘Zon and when I opened it in my kitchen area the most gnarly weird grotesque spider I’d ever seen in my entire life hopped out of the box, looked up at me and sneered. EEEK!  Look, I have lots of spiders around my house and some come inside. But this thing looked gross and alien. I am not even lying. GROSS and ALIEN! I was so startled, without thought I pulverized it before it deposited eggs and my entire house was taken over by weird grotesque alien spiders and I then would have to burn down my house.

I still feel a little bad for killing that spider. Dang. But GROSS and ALIEN!

My brain knows my weaknesses and often exploits them. No shit, you say. We didn’t notice, Kathryn. Ha-ha! Yeah.

When I was writing, these things were not as apparent. Sure I overthought things and had my lovable quirks (massive understatements says those who know me) but they weren’t stomping and cavorting and somersaulting in my brain as vehemently. If something were to enter, I imagine most times it exited from my brain down my arms, to my fingers, and was distributed amongst the characters and either saved or edited out. My brain was filled with my characters and what they were up to even when I wasn’t writing about them.

I know the ‘cure’ for these blippity blobbity blues is to work on my novel.

I mean, the entire time I’m writing this, Brain has had to concentrate on writing, haven’t you Brain?

Brain says, “Don’t blame me! Why ain’t you writing if it will bring some normal every day to the day?”

I once asked a novelist who had been on the New York Times Best Seller list and was much beloved by her readers, “When is your next book? You haven’t published anything in a long while.”

Now, this was when I was still fresh and new in the writing-to-publish world. I didn’t get it. I didn’t get anything. I knew nuttin’. I couldn’t fathom never writing. I would say I’d rather cut off my arm. I was so smug about it. What? You aren’t writing? Well, that will never be me!  Call me Smugly McSmug Pants—at least then.

She answered, “I can’t. It hurts too much.”

I was floored. She was very successful, or had been. Things changed. Publishing changed. People’s reading ‘habits’ changed. The world changed. We changed. She changed. It’s just different now and has been for some time—at that time we were in the first flow of the river changing direction and rushing up the downstream or down the upstream or maybe just becoming a driftless pond. But at the time I had that arrogant feeling of, “Well, that will never be me. I will write until I am no longer able, likely when I’m too old to lift my hands to the keys.”

I get it now. That ‘it hurts too much.’ And maybe you get it too. Or maybe you are where I was, feeling as if nothing in the universe can ever stop you from writing—and you may always stay there and if you do, I think that’s awesome! I think that is a beautiful thing. You are lucky and take a moment to feel a whole flowing river of gratitude!

But for some of us, for reasons known or unknown or both, we stopped because it began to hurt: maybe we had loss or a big stress event or loneliness or a loved one had health issues or we have to work a job that pays a steady salary since royalties are not what they used to be and we have a house and a dog to take care of or one of our books we wrote when our father was dying and we were so full of grief and rage that we vomited out a book and it was published too soon and it suffered for that rush and grief and rage and remains a lost opportunity thorn in our butt. Or maybe we are bored. Or moved on. Or want to live an actual life instead of sitting in a room for hours and hours and hours while life goes on around us.

Maybe I miss my once thriving writing life and all the activity around it and the meeting of writers and editors and the readers I loved so much (and still do), even if I mostly prefer being alone, mostly.

Maybe my brain is coaxing: “See what happens when you don’t write that book sitting in your files? So write … or else, hahaha-teeheehee- I run amok!”

I believe I had a grieving process for the What Was but now I  just can’t seem to figure out the What Next ….

What about you? Are you resisting? Do you know your What’s Next? Or are you as I once was or maybe will be again (without the smug)?