Thursday, September 07, 2006

Writer's block

Okay, technically, it's not writer's block. It's writer's paralysis. Writer's dread. Writer's deep procrastination...
I will be giving a talk in Toronto next week on the spirituality of the Pauline Family, something you'd think I'd be deeply familiar with after thirty-one years. I even attended a year-long, graduate-level course on it! No matter. It's still a very scary thing to attempt to organize content into a new synthesis for a new group of people, hoping all the while that you'll get some amazing flash of insight somewhere along the way so that you'll have something to say that you haven't said so many times before it feels like cheating.
Naturally, today I spent more time moving books on the shelves than moving the pen across the paper. I mean, and it's true, the bookshelves are horribly messy and distracting, and I had no where to put the New Orleans cookbooks Mom gave me unless I moved some books.
Meanwhile, we're one day closer to that talk.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you work better under pressure? Just wondering, because one day before your talk is cutting it close. Your talk about the Pauline Family's spirituality will have an audience of Paulines or others? I wish and pray that your talk will inspire all present. May God, the Holy Spirit, rain his blessings upon you on that day.

Anonymous said...

I can relate: I am a procrastinator myself. It is certainly not intentional because nothing is more frustrating than staring at a blank screen, knowing that a deadline is looming. I think it is due to a streak of perfectionism: I wait for that epiphany/AHA!/lightbulb moment when that perfect turn of phrase just leaps into my brain. In the meantime, everything is a distraction, so I can understand the need to straighten a bookshelf even though the clock is ticking... harv681