Stubbed: A Writer's Plight

I’d like to start by saying “Ouch!” The rest of the four letter expletives I will leave to your own imaginations. (By all means, be colorful. I certainly was.)

If I come out the other side of writing the Six Brothers with a single toe not in a cast, splint or a body bag I will indeed count myself lucky.

Yesterday, I once again stubbed the heck out of my literary big toe. Put pen to paper and fell flat on my face.

“Splat!” went Chloe on the carpet.

It was quite ugly. (My dog got a lot of enjoyment out of it however.)

Uglier still was the next five hours in which I wiggled around on the floor, coughing up the occasional sentence until my word count reached 103.

Yes, 103.

Instead of snapping my stupid literary big toe off and ramming said appendage down the garbage disposal, I hobbled out to that dark little corner in my yard and planted me some mondo grass. (See “Tackling That Corner” post a few days ago for details. This really does make good sense, trust me.)

Four little clumps of dark green grass I nestled tenderly into the earth. (This, of course, was after I hacked the weeds to death and yanked their spiny little corpses out of the ground… I enjoyed this part most of all. I can’t imagine why.)

After hosing my mulchy self down and limping back to the couch, I somehow managed to eke out another 450 words on the Six Brothers.

So, in short, my 558 word accomplishment was not only painful, it was dirty and itchy.

And you still want to be a writer?

*considers, then winces*

Yeah, ok, so do I. Now, shut up and leave me to my stupid big toe.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

Tackling That Corner

There’s a corner in my tiny backyard which is always dark and always damp.

Nothing but weeds will grow there.

Grass disdains even the notion of venturing into the dampish shadows. And after a valiant attempt, even a beautiful little magnolia tree lost its life in the dank outpost. (My gardening skills were beyond naïve at that horticultural low point of my life.  Thankfully, I’ve learned much since then.)

So, over the years I have essentially ignored the little spot, concentrating my efforts on the beautifully sun-bleached vistas of my tee-tiny plot…

Not anymore.

My trusty, four-legged sidekick and I are going in.  

Armed with a hoe, a trowel, a humongous bag of mulch and four clumps of dwarf mondo grass, me and my dog are taking back our troublesome little corner!

While this daily author’s blog may seem like a terribly odd place to note this journey/rescue mission, I trust with a little extrapolation all you authors out there can see the correlation.

Every writer has such an abandoned corner in their literary skills. A certain “thing” that we try our darnedest to ignore. Even if this avoidance is not intentional I’m sure if you look hard enough you will find that it is there.

It’s probably something little, something corny, something that you feel doesn’t even really bear mentioning. But it is a part of your whole.

There’s no doubt I could have a beautiful backyard despite that dark little corner. I could simply work around it, hide it behind prettier, easier things…

But I’d be missing an opportunity.

My backyard is tiny enough, hacking off a corner of it simply because I’m afraid to f**k it up is really kind of stupid.

So, grab your tools, your muse and some dwarf mondo grass and tackle the forgotten!

And so here today’s very weird “Go and get ‘em!” speech.

*chuckles at the blatant silliness/poorly-worded-wisdom of it all*

Until tomorrow…

Chloe and her mondo