Saturday, January 9, 2010

Ineptitude, Putrescence, and Spray Cheese.

I am unoriginal. I am an idea-stealing, style-reproducing, awful writer who can't seem to put any two words together without them sounding overworked and forced. I piggyback on books or poetry collections I've read and loved and then emulate the style (poorly, I might add) into my own writing until everything I do is some awful, synthesized conglomeration of great, previously written literature and horrific, whiny, teenage mess. Ungh.

Really terrible creative dry spell, you see. It's got my thoughts locked up in a bind and the only thing that can escape are terrible, gut-wrenching, scathing things about myself and my abilities. I don't often have this low self-confidence; in fact, I haven't ever had this little opinion about my skill as a writer. I've always had a small grain of glowing confidence tucked securely in the back of my brain offering light and heat and fire to my love of writing. I've always been able to tell myself that, in comparison with other writers at my age/maturity level, I'm not crap at all.

NOT. TODAY.

I had a lovely evening with Andrew tonight (or, technically last night now that it's 4:00 am). I haven't been able to see him as often as I'd like, since he's been at college and has had a 9-5 job for the entirety of Christmas vacation. I've been a bit frustrated about seeing him so little, so he had me pick him up from the train station after work so he could come over and watch my favorite movie with me. [Side note: favorite movie is Amadeus.] It was really nice to be able to snuggle up and just be together. It makes me feel wonderful to rest my head on his chest with our arms wrapped around each other. He wears Old Spice, which I think is the most incredible scent on a man. My father wore Old Spice, so it triggers all sorts of safe, happy scent-memories and good feelings associated with spending time with my dad. Andrew is convinced this is some sort of sick Electra complex and enjoys teasing me about it. (This is when I slap him and tell him I hate him and he can never touch me again, followed by a castration threat. Then we kiss. It's quite cute, actually.) Unfortunately, he had to get home much earlier than I wanted him to leave... as is usually the case. After I took him home and came back home to bed, I realized that I could still smell the Old Spice on my pillow. This triggered all sorts of awful romantic, sappy, cheery feelings that I just wanted to put into poetry.

This is when the fucking creative drought kicked in. Everything I wrote sounded like a 14 year old with her first crush wrote it for a project in English class. I read some Pablo Neruda to get me into the dizzyingly romantic and passionate mood and tried again. Frustratingly, all I came up with was a basic, bland, watered-down version of I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair with clunky metaphors and similies and far too much cheese. Not even good cheese, like soft-ripened brie or smoked gouda. Nacho cheese. Spray cheese. Canned cheese. Can-survive-a-nuclear-blast cheese.

So here's to having lovely, blissful, squibbly romantic feelings... and all the phrasing capability of an addled parrot. Harrumph.

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