Nobody Wants to Read a Tick-Tock

Just because the pizza is there, doesn’t mean you should eat it.

I am taking some time off of work to write. More than some I suppose, I have no timeline for when I will re-enter the work force. And it is weird and awkward and uncomfortable because I am writing about myself. It feels ridiculous and on a daily basis I wonder when I will give up and look for a new job. But I don’t want to give up. I want to see this through, I feel like I have to see this through.

My concern that no one will want to read what I write is not unfounded, I have no idea what I am doing. I have a BFA in studio art and I minored in English. I took masters level courses towards an MA in English for creative writing so it’s not as if I have zero experience, I just don’t know how to write about myself and a very specific and life changing experience in a way that doesn’t sound dippy.

I’ve been writing nearly every day since I decided to take this hiatus and I have piles of words and sentences and some are ok and most are just awful. I can’t seem to get out of my own way with this. I think what needs to happen is I have to get the shitty writing out of the way so I can make room for the better writing. And so that’s what I do, but it is demoralizing. I start with an idea and I start writing and then somewhere in the middle I get lost and it turns into a stupid tick-tock of what happened, a chronological story that is boring and trite and honestly, no one wants to read that. I don’t even want to write that, but what’s underneath that chronological list of what happened is pretty raw emotion and gross stuff I am apparently not ready to delve into and so the tick-tock takes over.

Trying to determine what I’m afraid of reveals a fear of people not only being uninterested in what I have to say, but also actively opposed to it. I worry because a lot of what I want to talk about will likely result in hurt feelings, and I realize this is the nature of memoir writing but it still looms large.

So today I am going to write down all the bad stuff, the stuff I know will hurt feelings, the thoughts that are nestled in my brain and I don’t want to write down because then it will be real, and maybe, just maybe I’ll figure out a way to back away slowly from the tick-tock.