Raise Them Stakes

So I said I wasn't going to do this. 

I was going to TRY and make this blog feature more things of note---links to interesting articles, my thoughts on said articles, my opinion of various conflicts in the world news, perhaps a witty anecdote or two about my day to day dealings--that kind of stuff. Stuff that is pertinent, interesting. Stuff that paints me as this person who at least has something relevant and thoughtful to talk about. 

I'm...not that person. 

I would be at least a little optimistic and say yet but...I don't know, guys. My life isn't the worst or anything, and really it has less to do with MY life and more to do with my feelings. Me emotionally. Ain't gonna get into detail about the nitty gritty but there's a reason I feel so craptastic these days and well...my writing is suffering majorly cause of it. 

I just don't care anymore, you know? I don't really care about writing. In fact, just got an email back from this place, the literary online journal Juked, that told me they would not be accepting my story submission. I just didn't care---care that it didn't make it, care to keep trying. I. JUST. DON'T. CARE. ANYMORE.

My day to day life is sad: I wake up, turn on the TV, and spend the rest of my waking hours on the computer surfing shit; endless and endless eons of stuff that isn't making me a better writer or a more productive human being. While I'm fully aware of my mental state of dishabille, I just pathetically take it all stride. There's no desire to try and do more, there's no drive to even be the least bit determined. It's just one day to the next, one day to the next...nothing. I'm dimly aware of the stuff that I have to take care of, the goals that I set, but they are hazy things that seem so far away and even not worth fighting for. 

I don't care about my appearance, what goes in my stomach. I hate that I'm trapped in what seems to be a sinking---well, it's not even a sinking ship. It's a shipwrecked vessel that's just floating out in the middle of a vast ocean. A huge piece of shredded wreckage that's moving along, every once and while bumping up against a mild wave and gaining only a little momentum. It's covered with bird shit and algae and there's me in the middle of it all---to lazy to do anything about it, no longer caring about being rescued. 

Yes, that's VERY melodramatic, but the short end of the stick is that I feel like nothing right now. Not a writer, not a former student, not a daughter, not a girlfriend, not a sister, an aunt, a granddaughter. I feel like a lump of dung crawling with flies and maggots. I just sit there and collect more. 

So I call this post "raise them stakes" because in my tenure in creative writing classes I've been pounded this sentiment relentlessly like Muhammed Ali after a liter of Red Bull---raise the stakes in whatever you're writing, in a scene, a setting and keep the reader interested they tell me. 

I've failed at this. There is no suspense in my writing, no clear conflict. There's no excitement, Michael Bay-esque explosions around every corner with a hot girl sauntering away while giving an eyeful of panty for the audiences---my characters on the page struggle to make up their minds about what to eat for dinner, what route to take to work. Nothing of interest basically. Nothing to keep someone plunking down twenty five bucks to get my latest novel. Maybe it's because I love my characters and I don't want to see them hurt, maybe it's because I need a few learner's courses in "how to write action filled scenes". 

Or maybe it's because my work so closely mirrors my own life. 

Yes, I love the characters I've made up. I have an entire cast of fictional peeps that have a beginning, middle, and end names along with a family tree dating back from their descendants who came to Ellis Island, but I'm no fool either. I know there's no use in having a character sit at a table for twenty pages musing about the state of the world while sipping from a cup of coffee and munching on a donut. I know that's not exciting. 

So that's where my apathy comes in. I don't care about making stuff happen. I don't care about readers, or keeping people interested or making a good book. My characters no longer do stuff because I didn't care when I was in class writing about it and I don't care now. Just like me they stay in their pajamas all day and look at the same Wikipedia article ten times because they can't figure out why their drive suddenly went over a cliff. 

I feel powerless when it comes to making stuff happen in my fictional world when I can't even make stuff happen in my own world. Writing is no longer an escape from me, it's a neglected pet that I'm watching die as a I starve it, vaguely interested to see how long it will take it for it to die. 

So, in short, that's why I haven't been able to post anything for the past couple of days and many, many days before that. 

I'm going somewhere---good or bad---but I don't care when or how I get there right now. It all means nothing.