Stuck again.

It's the middle of National Novel Writing Month, which is where budding authors are encouraged to spew out 50,000 words in 30 days with no real regard for quality. The theory is that at least churning out crap that can be edited later is better than churning out nothing. I don't know if I agree with that or not, but I was hoping the fact that it's this month would give me a push to start me writing something. I have 3 entirely different projects that I could be working on:

• A play that's already fully written, but I need to go back and cut it down a bit to make it shorter.
• A screenplay that I wrote a first-draft of a long time ago, and am now mostly rewriting from scratch, but I have the template of the old one to work from, so it's easier than if I were actually writing something new.
• A novel that I conceived of 15+ years ago, and have written the first chapter, and have ideas for other chapters, and I think it could be really great when it's finished, but it just keeps languishing.

The screenplay is what I've been working on most recently. I got bogged down at a transition point. I know what I want to write next, but I'm not sure how I want to get there. It's been about a month since I last did anything. But I have learned something important, which is that when the writing gets hard, I have a tendency to just stop doing it. Which is why I have so many good ideas still unwritten. It seems like an obvious thing, but I had never stopped to connect the dots before. I need to make myself sit down and work through the hard parts. Even if I don't make a lot of progress, I just need to keep at it. I think that part has finally sunk in. But I think there's another part that's still holding me back.

I blogged about it earlier this year, but the problem hasn't gotten any better. The classical way of putting it is that I have no muse. My way of putting it is that I'm lonely, and I just don't care about anything. It's not clinical depression, per se; I've had plenty of that, and I know how that feels. This is more like feeling that I'm broken. And it's not that I need someone to fix me; I need someone to love me so I have the strength to fix myself. It's like if you were in a coma for 2 years, and when you wake up your muscles have atrophied and you can't walk anymore. You don't need someone to carry you around everywhere; but you do need them to support you until you can walk again on your own. The thing is: that's kind of a full-time job. Or at least half-time. It's enough of a commitment that you aren't going to do it for just anybody. And that's my problem--the amount of attention and affection and whatever else I need is way too much to expect from one person--UNLESS that person is also getting fulfillment from me showing attention and affection to her. (I believe the clinical term for it is "relationship.") So, there it is. All I need is to get into a nice relationship and I'll be fine. Simple.

Yeah, not that simple. First, let's just ignore every relationship advice column ever printed when they say you have to be okay with yourself BEFORE you start a relationship with someone else. We've already established that ain't gonna work for me. I'm just going to dive right in to a relationship. Me. The super-introverted demisexual who hates talking to new people and has no self-esteem and who would call it a win if most women rated his appearance as "Not Hideous." Yes, indeed. Here we go. Step one is finding a suitable woman. I'm an INFP, so according to the charts, I would be pretty compatible with a woman who's ENFJ. Let's assume everyone wears a nametag with their Myers-Briggs type on it. I just go up to an ENFJ who looks promising and use up every ounce of my social energy reserves for the next 3 months and say hello and how are you and oh, how nice it is that you are married to another woman who is also a lesbian like yourself. Have a lovely day. Okay, that was probably just a fluke; let's try again in 3 months. [~3,000 married, lesbian, and/or Trump voters later...] Okay, let's assume that everyone wears a nametag with their Myers-Briggs type AND their sexual orientation AND their marital status, and the straight, single ENFJ's have been conveniently grouped together at that table over there. There are a grand total of 3 of them. 2 of them saw me coming over toward the table, and have walked away holding hands to go rethink how straight they really are. But the one who's left seems nice enough. And it seems easy to talk to her. And, OMG, she has one of those jobs that automatically makes her attractive to you! (See chart.)

Jobs Normal Men Are Attracted To	Jobs I Am Attracted To
Swedish Bikini Model	Social Worker
Classy Hooker	Counselor
High-School Cheerleader	Satchel's Waitress

It's going great! You feel pretty certain that this definitely could be a woman that you are interested in wanting to have a relationship with. But before we can take things to that level, we have to go to the 2nd step of the Demisexual Relationship Flowchart(tm):

Step 2: Be totally platonic BFF's for like 3 years.

Assuming that goes okay, you'll be walking up the gangway to the Relation-Ship in no time! And what could go wrong? I mean, sure, you live in a culture that thinks there's no potential for a relationship if you don't have sex by the third date. Whereas you feel a little weird when she gets tipsy on your New Year's Eve Totally Platonic Friend Date(tm) and gives you a half-second peck on the lips. It'll be fine. She loves you, and I'm sure she's PERFECTLY HAPPY to be celibately hanging out with you, as her prime sexual years slowly tick away. Tick, tick, tick.

I guess what I'm saying, in a roundabout way, is that the odds of me ever getting into the kind of relationship I want are pretty long. And this isn't me feeling sorry for myself--I'm just objectively (as possible) looking at who I am and the reality of the dating culture I'm in, and concluding that it's hard to see a way that this is ever going to work for me. And now I bring this back around to writing.

When I first started getting serious about writing, the material itself was always drama as opposed to comedy. Comedy has always been what I'm good at. If I wanted to make a living at writing, comedy would probably be the best avenue to do it. But what I wanted to do was show people who I really am. Most people know me as the person I present to the world, but that's not me. The number of people who have experienced the actual me, I can probably count on one hand. Most of that I think was a defense mechanism to deal with low self-esteem plus fear of rejection. I was so sure people were going to reject me, that I showed them a false version of who I was. They might reject that, but it was okay, because that wasn't actually me. (It probably made sense in my subconscious.) 15+ years ago, I didn't know I was introverted or demisexual. I knew I had some traits that I now associate with those words, but back then I just thought I was very socially awkward. And I was lonely, and had no idea how I would ever not be lonely; because it was hard to talk to anyone, and when I did, I wasn't being my real self. Writing was my way to deal with that. I could take my real self and mold it into a bunch of words and show that to people. Honestly, I think I was secretly hoping that I would write something, and the right person would read it and fall in love with me. Just like that. Some sort of literary Hail Mary pass that gets deflected right into the arms of a receiver for a touchdown, and magically everything in my life would become okay.

Now, when I write, there are other motivations. Mostly, that I can write something really good. Good enough that some professional in the industry will read it and say, "Hey, this is really good." The hope of writing something that makes someone fall in love with me is still there, I think, but it's in the background. But the fact that it's still there might be causing a problem. Because I think maybe my brain and my subconscious are having a conversation like this:

Brain: "Okay, let's do some writing! We have talent, and I know we can create something awesome!"
Subconscious: "Remember when we used to write stuff and it was all a sad attempt to find love?"
Brain: "Yeah. But now we write because we want to be a serious writer."
Subconscious: "Did we give up on love?"
Brain: "Pretty much. I did the calculations and I don't see it ever happening."
Subconscious: "Well, that's a shame." *sigh*
Brain: "I know..." *sigh*
Subconscious: "Do you wanna just skip this writing crap, eat something fattening, then take a nap?"
Brain: "Yeah..."