G. L. Morrison

I suck at journaling.Virgina Woolf was out of her mind. “Loosening the ligatures of the mind” ?!?I have completely lost touch with what my goals were in keeping a journal. Is it to spiral into my own feelings? (Often difficult depending on who I think is listening… but f*ck, can’t I train myself to remember the variable privacy setting? Write what I want and then decide who I want to see it…) Is it to chronicle my own life-journey? Date life-events? Eavesdrop on my own feelings? Impress strangers? (Gee, I thought that’s what publishing was for.)

Larry’s journal is clearer to me. One he writes because I told him he had to. Two it has become a sort of daily love-letter to Carrie and I. He knows she reads it every day. I don’t actually. It becomes a reminder of all I haven’t written.

…ohmygawd, of course… a reminder of not writing. That was one of my goals. To write just to be writing anything. No one told me writer’s block would be this aching rage. I’m not sure I can actually call it writer’s block… perhaps writer’s ennui? Writer’s stillbirth? Writer’s blown headgasket?

Sometimes I pretend not to know why I’m not writing. There are so many multi-layered reasons for everything that you can speculate out the wazoo (about anything). But I know I’m not writing because I’m at a crossroads of competing goals. I came to a fork in the road and instead of choosing the path less traveled I sat down at the junction and said “welll, fuck!” Which goal is worthy? To novel or not to novel. If so, how to finish? To write *my* story? If so what to leave in, leave out… do I really want to share with the world what I’m reluctant to say to my therapist? Why? Why? Why not? To be famous? As what? Poet? Erotica writer? Performance poet? And what’s the point in writing if I’m not submitting/marketing/publishing? Gawdess, I need an agent. With an agent my goals could be so much less esoteric.

Tee called me a while ago and said “What are you doing to be famous?” I love her and she so inspires me and then I fall under the fist of depression and whybotherness. Still it’s lovely to have friends who recognize being famous as a worthy goal.

I don’t want to be famous. I want to be immortal. So instead of feeling guilty about wanting it I should get out of bed and greet myself in the mirror with “Morning, girlfriend, what have you done today to ensure your immortality?”

Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, Shakespeare (the actor who was perhaps a playwrite, perhaps a plagarist, perhaps a pen-name but none the less immortal) they all had one thing in common. They were unwavering about their own genius and they pushed, pushed pushed their work. That is what it takes to join and even alter the canon of literature. Banish self-doubt. Live for art.