Sunday, January 15, 2017

Overcoming Writer's Block (or Something about a Date)

A week ago or something to that effect I wrote a story about a failed romantic encounter. Much to my amusement and chagrin it became quite popular. It’s a weird feeling when someone greats you as Mr. 3.5, but hey at least that means they read your stuff. I did enjoy telling the story so I thought why not go down that well again and reminisce about another escapade of my romantic days. But perhaps this time I’d switch it up. Instead of telling a tale of me falling, falling, falling, I’d relay a story of triumph. This time I thought it’s time to weave a yarn of a positive romantic story to prove to the my faithful following and to my myself (but mainly my faithful following) that I am not necessarily the Woody Allen/ Larry David/ Harry Potter looking character I seem to portray. A good idea I thought until I hit a major problem. I could not find the words to tell what’s true.

Simply put I got a case of the old writer’s block. I got through several opening paragraphs of this, at least to me, delightful story but I just couldn’t commit to a version that I liked. Different problems with my method would occur but always at the same spot and it was a very early spot in the story. I couldn’t get passed meeting her after work. I would play with a long vague introduction of the past and segue into my feelings at the present but that would just abruptly end once I typed, “I put my guide book away and we walked through Bryant Park.” Other times I would start trying to ape what I did for the 3.5 story but that style was different. That story had an immediacy to it that I couldn’t nor should want to replicate. The Clash once sang that lightning strikes not once but twice (off their Sandinista album) but I’m not the Clash and the bolt was long gone. Why couldn’t I do this? Why couldn’t I write about a particularly fun date I had?

It’s not like the date was boring or ordinary; it had some great twists and turns and I had certain parts mapped out but I couldn’t fully connect the pieces. What was preventing me from putting this down the way it needed to be written? Maybe the story was too personal but then again when has that stopped me from ever sharing anything. Case in point a respected colleague of mine dubbed me “no-filter Thompson”. As nicknames goes it’s weak in the rhyming or alliterative department but it more than pulls its weight in the field of accuracy. There must be something to it because it’s stuck to the point where I on occasion try to live up to that lofty title. I don’t mind it, in fact I find it quite disarming. My theory is if I open up and am completely honest you’ll have no problem doing the same and we can start connecting as people. Also I just don’t care. Usually I’m trying to amuse myself by sharing my “hilarious” stories with others. It’s how I please the narcissist in me.

But getting back to the point, why couldn’t I write this story where things ended up very good. Why was this particular dating anecdote giving me so much trouble? My stories of failure or strangeness had poured out but for some reason nothing was flowing when I tried to accentuate the positive. Am I just a negative person? Was it really that simply? Had I grown so accustomed to living out a self-proclaimed “bizarre” life that when something “bizarre and great” happens I don’t know how to process it? Jesus, if that was the honest truth that would be fucking depressing, but I don’t really think so. It had to be something else cause I’m not necessarily a negative person but more the type who embraces their emotions a little too fully. Probably a little too much if you ask certain friends and colleagues of mine but hey someone once told me that kind of living was cathartic. Actually that person was me but that’s a topic for another self-indulgent blog post.

In the end I think it had to do with how much that day and date meant to me. A popular thing to do towards the end of 2016 was to discuss how we all survived an abnormally poor year. But I was talking to some people and we decided to flip the script and talk about what we enjoyed most about 2016. I thought about some great moments I had over the year, but I kept circling back to that date with her. It was a night where everything got better and better and every time I replayed the past I kept remembering different details that would make me smile. Moments would flash by and my glasses became rosy red and the nostalgia would reach its full effect. I would think back to us sitting on a bench overlooking the 59th Street Bridge like we were shooting a remake of the famous scene from Manhattan. Of course the only difference was that there were a bunch of bums near us and one of them was so kind as to offer us a piece of his dinner which we both foolishly accepted, but in retrospect (and several doctor appointments later) turned out to be a strange highlight of the evening. Or later when she grabbed my cheeks and said “ahh I love this face” and I thought it was one of the greatest things I had ever heard. Or towards the beginning of the evening when we ate oysters in a way that would make Tom Jones proud. Maybe it was the heavy nostalgia shading my eyes, and it most likely was, but that was probably my favorite moment of last year. It wasn’t simply how well the date went, but who it was with and the timing of it all. It was something I had wanted for a long while and it was all happening and I didn’t want it to end.


Which brings me back to my main point of why I couldn’t write about this particular evening of mine and that was because it would never come out the way it deserved to be told. There would always be something incomplete and left to linger on in the streets of Manhattan. And that’s fine, maybe it’s better than me going into my no-filter Thompson mode. It was my favorite time of last year and there is no way I can express that in lines. It was one of those moments you look back on and can’t help but be glad that it happened and that you were lucky to be involved. Now of course it would have been simpler to state this now obvious reason a few paragraphs ago but sometimes self-indulgence at 4 in the morning can be a good and incredibly cathartic thing. Perhaps it’s just the narcissist in me.  

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