Sunday/Monday Scribblings: The books I would write

I don’t know why the ideas don’t come. I’ve set the mood--fragrant steam swirling from my coffee cup, napping Madam, open document, blank with the cursor blinking...blinking...blinking...

"Did you read some of the Scribblings already up?"

I know this voice.

I know I should ignore it, but as always, I rise to the bait.

After all, I know all of my own buttons.

"Yeah, they’re funny and fabulous, as usual." I try to stay positive, not an easy thing when I’m being visited by Resistance, Resi for short. I turn back to the computer screen. Hope Resi just goes away.

"Better than anything you could come up with."

"It’s not a competition."

"Oh, come on! Everything is a competition!" She replied. "How else do you know if you’ve done it right?"

I hunch over the keyboard, trying to block her view of my still-blank screen. "It’s just about having fun." I don’t even sound convincing to myself, let alone to, well, myself-as-Resi.

"It’s only fun if you can do it will, which we all know you can’t...these people who read your stuff, they are just being nice to you, you know." She sighs and moves close to my screen, squinting. "Oh, let me help you--let’s see what you’ve got..."

"How about--"
"Stupid."

"Well, OK, what about--"
"Embarassing!"

"OK, then--"
"No!"

"About-"
"Bad!"

"This--"
"Wrong!"

I held my head in frustration.

"You know...you aren’t making it any easier! Thanks to you I can barely write my own name!"

She slid closer to me, took an ingratiating tone.

"Look, I’m just looking out for us...you. I don’t want to disappoint anyone. What if they find out the truth? That we have NO IDEA what the hell we’re doing? They’d laugh...they’d point...they’d KNOW. I’m just protecting you!"

"Maybe I just shouldn’t write anything!"

She grinned. "That’s the spirit! After all...nobody cares what you have to say anyway! Who do you think you are, talking about the books you would write...ha! More like the books you wouldn’t write."

I turned away from the computer, feeling bested by her again. As we moved towards the television, I whispered, "What if I could write the kind of books I need? The kind of book that gets dog-eared, read at the breakfast table and under the covers at night? Underlined with exclamation points around the quotes? The kind where you ache from the beauty of it, beauty that is suddenly visible all around you? The kind where you spend a day or a week or a month dressing like the heroine, talking like her, getting behind her eyes so completely that you feel like you've been dropped in a new and shiny and better life?"

Resi grew alarmed, tried harder to pull me towards the sweet narcolepsy of the television. But now I couldn’t seem to stop.

"What if I could write the kind of books that can teach you to be bold, to be big and succulent and sexy in your skin? To writhe in joy like a cat on a sunny sidewalk? To see the eccentric fascination that slants sideways in the world, and even in yourself? The kind of book where someone who never thought much of her mind, or her own thoughts, could see them flash, electric and thrilling, and say, 'Yes, exactly. That is it, exactly.'"

"What if I could write a book that could shout a YES that could drown out even your eternal NO?"

She frowned.

"That wouldn’t be a very good book."

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For more of the wonderful Sunday Scribblings that caused my Resistance to visit, go here.