I am stuck with this poem I am working on. And I am anxious to get it done --- I feel I have been working on it for too long, and I need to move ahead with this chapbook project. I know that kind of anxiety is not good, but I can't help it. It seems like I know what to say, and where I want the poem to go. I have these vague images circulating inside my head, broken words, but I am struggling to put them all together in forms and language that will make me feel satisfied. At least for the time being.
I know this is very me. I get tired with projects when they drag on for too long. Although I know that in order for a writing project to culminate itself in the way I want it to, I must show up everyday, and put in bits and pieces of myself there, I am scared of that process. I am scared of the way that process exhausts me, leaves me drained, makes me feel incompetent and even embarrassed with myself at times. But it's true what I dread more is the ultimate failure. This feeling that I slogged and slogged and didn't really produce anything. Or I gave it up midway. This is something that I guess keeps me going. Consequently, in the last three years, I have only one incomplete writing project. A short story about a small-town girl that began and then realized halfway that I don't really know enough about the world I am writing about to finish it.
So, now that I have complained enough, I need to pour the tea from the kettle and sit down to write. At least try to write.
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