{"id":4589,"date":"2012-08-10T06:00:49","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=4589"},"modified":"2012-08-10T06:00:49","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T11:00:49","slug":"willpower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=4589","title":{"rendered":"Willpower"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This isn’t the exact car (this photo is borrowed from Wikimedia Commons<\/a>) but this is what I remember it looked like.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I was growing up, my dad had a great sportscar, a Triumph TR-4. It was white and a convertible and sat two, though my brother and I would shoehorn ourselves into the space behind the seats. This was a cool car, and it was only later that I discovered it was British and that made it even cooler.<\/p>\n

The car had a manual transmission and Dad would flip a switch and it would go into overdrive. (Don\u2019t ask me to explain overdrive unless we\u2019re talking about guitar sounds. I never understood it beyond \u201cit\u2019s extra gears\u201d.) When I was old enough to learn how to drive, the family car was a Datsun B210 (a car I later killed by dozing off behind the wheel but that\u2019s another story) which also had a manual transmission. It was the car I learned to drive on. My parents cringed as I learned how to shift gears.<\/p>\n

And who hasn\u2019t gone through that? If you aren\u2019t a parent, you won\u2019t know how it feels on both sides, but that\u2019s okay. Trust those of us that have that it can be the stuff of nightmares.<\/p>\n

That sound of grinding gears is something that\u2019s instantly recognizable. In cartoons, films, and comedies we know that there will be stoppage, that some of the gears may crack or pop off their axles, that there may be smoke and heat.<\/p>\n

As a writer I can imagine gears in my head, and sometimes they grind when I’m struggling with a story or even plotting or planning a story. The teeth that are supposed fit neatly together break, and the gears slip, too. Sometimes the teeth are misaligned and nothing happens, there\u2019s only spinning, spinning, spinning.<\/p>\n

When that happens the words and ideas aren\u2019t coming or they aren\u2019t fitting together. There may be a lot going on in my head, but nothing is working correctly. The words are whirling around in there and unlike the Triumph, there\u2019s no mechanic I can go to put them back in line. It\u2019s frustrating, maddening, and just about the worst thing that happens. (See all our posts about Writer’s Block<\/a> for more.)<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t happen too often, and when it does it can send me into paroxysms of doubt and denial. That I\u2019m not talented, that I can\u2019t write a thing, Nothing at all. There’s a lot of cussing and mopey introspection and it’s all really tedious.<\/p>\n

So I get out a manual, a book that inspires me to figure out why the gears have gotten so off. The bookshelf in my office is full of manuals and the internet has dozens<\/a> and dozens more available to anyone who cares to look for them.<\/p>\n

But they don\u2019t always work. That sends me even lower.<\/p>\n

However it also strengthens my determination. There\u2019s got to be something, some way to get myself back on track.<\/p>\n

I never got to drive the Triumph. It wasn\u2019t something that was a big deal, but it would have been fun to drive. I know that much. But it doesn’t affect me in any palpable way. I have to drive every day no matter what now, and not much stops me from that or slows me down. I have too many responsibilities. Likewise, not being able to write is just not going to happen. I\u2019m going to serve the words up, good or bad, until the gears interlock and the wheels are turning.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t ever quit. I won\u2019t ever give up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was growing up, my dad had a great sportscar, a Triumph TR-4. It was white and a convertible and sat two, though my brother and I would shoehorn ourselves into the space behind the seats. This was a cool car, and it was only later that I discovered it was British and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[256,453,476,999,1186],"class_list":["post-4589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writers-life","tag-datsun-b210","tag-gears","tag-grind","tag-shift","tag-triumph-tr-4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}