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9:42 p.m. - 2012-08-27
why i need to write
I really need to write.

Actually I started writing. I started writing a short story about a woman who pushes her husband over a cliff and gets away with it. I got to the morning after she pushed him and stopped. That was four days ago.

I used to think I was going to be a writer -- a real one, not a news reporter writing other people's stories on deadline and sans unnecessary words -- but I haven't had much to say, on my own, for years.

I think this is making me feel unhappy and unfulfilled. I have nothing to say because I am boring and so is my life.

Plus there was Matt overshadowing me 24-7 -- I think part of his being and feeling big required making me feel small. Everything I was good at or loved was unimportant if he couldn't do it better. Art, music, learning languages and writing were all pointless, harmless passtimes as far as he was concerned.

(To diverge slightly, I've realize that probably Matt is a workaholic because his ability to succeed professionally and make money is really his only personal asset. He's lousy in bed, boring, and a wimp. If he wasn't a success at work, he'd be a total loser. Maybe he knows this, and that's why he's always put work before everything else.)

(Well, he is a decent photographer. Ok, so that makes two positive personal qualities...)

Where am I going with this? I don't know. If I had a deadline, and that deadline was tonight, my short story would be done right now. I need to find some sort of motivation because I'll never be a "real" writer if I don't write.

Blah blah.

What I really wish I could do is write crime novels like the Alex Delaware/Alex Cross/Kay Scarpetta etc. novels, which my mom and I both love and swap when we're done with them. The problem there is that coming up with a believeable, "sexy" main character working closely and believeably with a police department in a major city is incredibly hard to do if you have never been a cop or lived in a major city. Granted, I was a crime reporter for years, and I've spent a decent amount of time at crime scenes, riding along in cruisers and schmoozing with cops. But the biggest cities I've ever worked in are Atlantic City and New Haven, and neither of those is first-tier.

I have covered a few really interesting, truth-is-stranger-than-fiction murders, etc., and had the opportunity to do my own hands-on, gritty, sometimes very scary investigative reporting, though. Once I tracked down and interviewed a murderer before the cops did, pissed off a very scary mail-bomber, and covered a pair of identical twins whose DNA was found on the body of a murdered woman, confounding police as to which one had killed her. (Turned out they both did. Identical twins don't have identical fingerprints, and both twins' finger prints were found on the murder weapons).

A few weeks ago it occurred to me that instead of trying to create a main character, I should just make the main character ME -- either as a cop (how I would act if I was a cop) or as a reporter. OK, so that is beyond narcissistic, but what could be easier? The real-life me always acted with total disregard for common sense or bodily safety when chasing a story, so why reinvent the wheel?

Anyway, A. is making me feel like I can, or could, write something that people would want to buy and read. This is not so much because she's directly said so, although she has, but because she doesn't make me feel like an inconsequential nobody like Matt did/does. Matt used to say he thought I could write a bestseller, but I don't think he meant it and I don't think he thought I could do much of anything but be the supportive, helpful spouse of a successful man.

Also, A is probably not going to be making M's salary anytime soon, so if I'm with her and I want to get more-than-comfortably-well-off, I'm going to have to go out and do it myself. (Which is fine with me, btw, if a little bit scary.)

And lastly, if M is going to dump me like a hot potato after I did HIS work for him in my free/vacation time for 8-plus years, it would KILL me to see him rolling in the dough while I'm struggling to make ends meet.

I really want to stick it to him. The best way to do that would be to be richer and more successful than he is.

Must start writing.


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