Exhaust Ports on the Death Star

I don't know about you, but coming face to face with personal weaknesses always disconcerts me.  Lately, it has been happening more than the law of averages would account for.  In my opinion, any way.

It used to make me angry and embarrassed with myself.  Now I just seem to sigh bemusedly and mumble to myself.  Today, I underwent two separate episodes of Weakness Realization, of two very different sorts.  One made me self-conscious, the other made me a bit worried and sad.

Second one first.  It has to do with my internal struggles on being a writer, on wanting to be a novelist.  Two years ago I would have scoffed loudly at the idea that I could/would write a book.  In the light of those days, that notion would have reeked of absurdity.  It just didn't seem possible.

Then I stepped out of my personal journals and went Webby with the blog.  Not with the idea of writing a book, mind you, or becoming an author.  It was simply to get the noise out of my head, and maybe find out what other people would do with that noise.  With the positive feedback I received, I felt more empowered to keep at it.  Again, this was without a plan to become a writer of books.  It wasn't until I started writing some things in series that people (i.e. you, dear readers) began asking me if/when I was going to write a book.  The idea then took root and certainly fired my imagination.  So, then, to the book!

Astute readers will already be saying to themselves "But, Gumbo, where's the book?"

Ah.  You see the problem.  The elephant is in the room, and it's sitting behind me, isn't it?

I begin to hear whispers about the emperor's clothes, or something like that.  This is truly the nubbin of the problem (or the "Crux O' De Biscuit" as my late brother was fond of saying).  I have not written a book.  I don't have a hard outline for a book.  Writing a book...intimidates me.

And that is the real problem.  I have a lot of ideas, but they usually manifest themselves in poems and short stories.  A lot of one-off happenings, and I have been unable to find the bridges between them.

I think in titles.  I think in short stories.  My brain seems to compose writing like DNA: small molecules of few components that have the potential, potential, to grow into something great.  Under the right combination of nature and nurture, all the noises in my head could maybe be turned into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.  Yet, this has not happened, and I'm unsure as to why.

Well, that's not quite true.  I have an inkling of a trace of a ghost of an idea as to why.  I think there is a certain courage, or discipline, or nerve one needs to make that leap from random scribblings to coherent novel.  And I?  I can't figure out if I have it.  Maybe I do, and am just scared of the commitment.

But I sure would like to write books.

The first thing I mentioned above, in the second (long ago) paragraph?  Is not so much a weakness (or weaknesses) as it is something that could be potentially be used to take advantage of me and the soft spots in my heart.  Not necessarily for malevolent purposes, mind you, but that which could put me in a position of not being able to say no due to not entirely unpleasant befuddledness (is that even a word?).  It has to do with a realization I had today, one that I voiced to myself in the safety of my car...and put into words some wants long held but never acknowledged out loud.  Talking to myself, I had to laugh.

I'll let it go at that.  Stories for another time, perhaps...