Writers Cramp

The reason I'm at the library is that Monday I hit a deadly spot of writers cramp--not writers block, writers cramp.

I don't know how many people have experienced it, but sometimes I get cramps in my feet so severe that I can't walk and if I let it go my feet start to curl up. It's painful, it can last for hours, it gets progressively worse and even though I know the cause and the solution it still hurts. A lot. Even in retrospect it still hurts.

Writers cramp is like that.

Writers block is a fact of life. Sometimes we just can't write, or can't think of anything to write, or everything we write comes out wrong. We deal with it, work past it. We figure out how. It's not really painful, just irritating (unless we're on a deadline).

Writers cramp is something else entirely. It's painful, it slams me in the face that I'm not good enough, that I'll never be good enough, that a first grader could write better and why bother because nothing I write will ever be good enough. I'm sure you have your own versions.

It doesn't happen to me very often.

The bout on Monday lasted for several hours. I wrote a few sentences on a few different novels, spent most of the day editing and otherwise just tried to work past it. I'm still dealing with the residue.

The best solution for writers cramp is to do whatever my brain is trying to convince me not to do, which in this case is freelance writing. I mean, I've been dreaming (night dreaming, not day dreaming) about lawsuits for a week, dreaming about the place I used to work, etc, and the pattern is apparent. The writers cramp was just a last ditch (I hope) effort of my brain to keep me from doing something that will keep me from getting a full time job--other than writing. The stupid thing wants security.

So I just picked up seven books about freelance writing. Well, three anyway. The other four are about writing as well, just not freelance writing.

This morning I sat down and hammered out two articles based on comments from the internet. Either one of them could probably be re-written on a couple of different topics, but it's a base.

It should be enough to keep the writers cramp under control for a while, as long as I keep my momentum.

My worst enemy in all this is myself.