Hello, folks! (Admittedly not much of a warning for what follows.)

Well, this blog has been sitting here, empty, for quite some time, and the reason is that I've had no idea what to put in it.  I'm still not sure.  I've often wondered--can you call yourself a writer if you haven't written anything real in months?  In years?  For the longest time, I can remember telling people (in those obnoxious introductions you do on the first day of a class, in undergrad orientations, at the start of graduate assistantships) that I'd written a book.  And then it finally hit me--yes, I'd written a book, but I'd written it roughly five years ago, when I was seventeen, and it was crap.

Or not really crap, in the sense that it was a good work for a seventeen-year-old to have written, or finished, since I started it at fifteen.  It was about 400 solid pages of supernatural romantic suspense (which is how I finally decided to categorize it), and if I'd done any actual research on England and its history and peasant life (though I truly did know the architecture of an Elizabethan mansion inside and out by the time I was finished), it could have been something.  Maybe.  In a genre-ish, not-going-to-stand-the-test-of-time-or-win-any-awards-or-be-all-that-memorable kind of way.  But that would have been enough for me at that point.  I wanted to get that acceptance letter.  I wanted to see my name in print.  I wanted to go into a bookstore all alone, walk down the aisles of the mystery section, and find my book on the shelf.  It wasn't as cute as when I was about ten and I said I didn't care about the money, that I just wanted my published book, even if I never got a dime.  No, I wanted money when I was seventeen, lots of it.  But I wanted it so I would be able to keep writing.

The problem is that I didn't.  Keep writing, that is.  I went to college, like I was expected to, and hated every second of it.  I majored in English, of course, but, while most of my professors were great, I never seemed to get to read anything I wanted to read.  Not once, as an English major, was I assigned any Bronte, any Dickens, any Austen or Eliot or Dostoevsky--  Sure, there was a dash of Dickinson's "admiring bog" and a quick glance, thankfully, at some short stories like Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilyich," but not much more.

And I didn't write.  I couldn't.

Why?

Then I graduated.  I wanted to work in a bookstore, like Barnes & Noble.  I didn't.  I went to grad school, and I started teaching.  And I got to read a few things I wanted (mainly because I got to pick them myself for projects).  I also cried a lot that first semester because of all the work and that stupid obsession I have with perfectionism, and I didn't write.  I didn't write.  Aside from papers, of course.  20-frickin'-page papers.

Then, finally, I took a children's literature class and wrote a "short" fantasy that really should have been a book, about a little crystal fairy horse.  I loved that little horse.  And he made me want to write again.

Which I did.  I wrote and wrote, and hammered out about 160 pages of a middle grade fantasy novel called The Princesses of Rosalea, and I loved it--still do.  I toyed with it after that, got advice, and rewrote it, doubling the length.  I loved it more, except, of course, for the beginning.  If there's one part of a thing I hate writing, it's a beginning, and, no, nothing has ever helped like "Don't worry about writing the perfect 'beginning'--just jump right into a scene" or "Start with action" or "Ask your characters what they'd do."  And as for that last one, I mean, seriously?  Ask my characters what they'd do?  There's nothing more fake, in my opinion, that an attempt like that one at being "real" and "natural."

Of course, the book got rejected--after all, I had to submit my beginnings.  (And I do mean beginnings--I've completely rewritten the beginning of this book more times than I can count.)  And in the meantime I kept on teaching, post-grad school, as an adjunct composition instructor, with minimal income, with no benefits, and with, well, composition.  Ugh.  Composition.

But at least I could say I'd written a book again, one that I was proud of.  Right?  Maybe . . . It's a little over four years now since I wrote that book, even though I'm still tweaking it.  And, once again, I can't write anything new.  I've managed to crank out twelve pages of another book, but that's it.  Twelve pages.

So why can't I write?  For the same reasons I've let myself gain weight, I guess, for the same reasons that I don't hesitate to order a hot fudge sundae with whipped cream and nuts even though I'm diabetic, for the same reasons that I find myself putting off washing my face and taking showers until my skin and hair are disgusting and greasy.  I know, it's horrible, and gross.  But it's what depression does to you.  It makes you want to cry for no reason, and for all the reasons you think you've failed so far, and it makes you opt for sleep (or that pointless facebook game) at the last minute instead of writing, even though you want to work on your book, or books, so badly.

I don't hate my life, but it sure feels like I do much of the time.  It's because I hate what I do and what I don't do.  I hate teaching composition, mainly because I don't even believe in it.  Is it good for students to learn how to write?  Heck yeah.  But the way I'm "teaching it"?  I doubt it.  I lecture about crap like the "writing process," which they'll never use once they leave my class, and why should they?  Yeah, that's right, Elbow, that's right, Murray, who cares about your damn freewriting and your ask-my-students-questions-about-how-they-feel-about-their-piece-of-writing?  I think it's all likely a bunch of bullshit.  I'm sure it works for a select few.  But most--I doubt it.

And why the hell does a student--or anyone--need to know what a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is?  (Pronounced, of course, in my best Latin: poste hoke air-go prope-tair hoke.)  Are they really going to, someday, in their wondrous careers, pick up an argumentative paper written by, I don't know, some sinister career nemesis, and exclaim, "Post hoc ergo propter hoc!  Post hoc ergo propter hoc!  Now I've got him!  Yes, now I've got him!"  (Or her.  To be politically correct.  And apparently my imaginary career person is British.)

But, seriously, is it going to happen?  I once again . . . wait for it . . . doubt it.

And if I, the teacher, doubt it, how can I make my students believe it?

I can't.

And if it all makes me so mind-numbingly depressed, how can I write?  What I want to write, that is, and not the handouts I have to have ready for tomorrow?

I can't.

I can't. 

I can't.

I need to do something.  Now. 

Maybe I'll go get a PhD.