I don’t know how many posts I’ve deleted instead of publishing them this week. I’m in the part of the downward spiral where you try to explain it to yourself, to others, and then you see there’s no real reason for what you’re feeling, any excuse pathetic, but you’ve got all this motion going and even if you wanted to stop spiraling, you sort of can’t. I’m spinning too fast to make it stop.

I’m just down. Feeling frustrated at what a slow writer I am when I’m writing something that counts. I can bang out a work-for-hire manuscript with alarming speed, but when it comes to something that matters, something of my own? Let’s just say I’m lucky to get one paragraph every hour—and I only have two hours on weekdays in which to write. And how is it possible that I am still working on my outline for my novel, still? I can’t even call it an outline. It’s more a hybrid mishmash of Stuff That Happens in an abbreviated form, but with dialogue sometimes, and with chapter titles… It’s like a rehearsal novel. I’m all dressed up, acting out the writing of it, but I’m not writing it. I just wish I could really write it.

I may also be depressed because I’m having trouble with the last act. Usually middles are my poison, but this time, with this story, it’s the events just before the end. I know the end note; I just don’t know how to handle the big explosion.

(Not to mention the Stuff That’s Happening in my real life and how I want to run away to Mexico.)

But at least I have been reading. I’m in the middle of Unaccustomed Earth and while I usually get intensely turned off by hype and never want to read the books everyone tells me to read (Hi, Harry Potter), this book of short stories is really good. I’m liking it even better than her first one. Of course I can hype with the best of them… I am now texting my sister to tell her she must read Jesus’ Son… and don’t even get me started on Good Morning, Midnight.

This morning I will continue my rehearsal novel. In the blink of an eye the workday will be over. And tonight I’ll keep reading this book. Maybe talk to e about my outline—he’s my plot magician, my secret weapon; he’ll help me finesse my story. No reason to be down, hey!

HEY. Did you hear me? No reason to be down.

No reason.

None.