The Idea Dam has Burst.

So yeah, all that yard work earlier in the week. So.So.Sore. It’s a good thing I’m not walking up and down the stairs (due to the Man Cold down there) because I’m not sure I’d be able to. Aleve is my friend today. The treadmill is most definitely not.

Over the past week, my brain hurt. And just about the time I started to get concerned, I realized it wasn’t pain; my muse was barfing up novel ideas faster than I could write them down, even. And what’s with the Y/A idea? I don’t DO Y/A. I don’t even…. Yet, there’s one with all kinds of potential and could become a trilogy. What’s up with that? So wrong, terribly, terribly wtf-kind of wrong for me.

News flash: Extensive gardening may cause the Idea Dam to bust wide open.

My problem isn’t jotting down pages of character idiosyncrasies and budding, half-formed plot threads. My problem is what to do with this stuff.

Actual writing has been blocked since my class writing teacher went AWOL a few weeks ago, no wait, before that even, when The Man blew half a head gasket two years ago over the biggest job layoffs of all (which are starting anew you’ll know if you pay attention to who’s letting who go in our local news area – no joy there). Back then, he said he worried about me getting a novel published, figuring out how much of a jerk he’d been, and finally leaving him. Just like that. As if I’d get a million dollar check and a mansion right up front. No, he doesn’t think me writing anything is a good idea.

He’d deny saying any of that now. I’ve mostly come to terms with his blocky memory and his resentment toward mine. He has problems remembering most of our “conversations” and even more of our arguments. He’s said some nasty things regarding my struggles to write over the past two years; remembers one or two of them at best.

So all this time, I’ve just been picking at boring, unfinished ideas without much interest one way or the other. I don’t want to stir up trouble. It’s funny. I used to be able to write all kinds of drama and oddball character stuff. I’ve always been surrounded by those. I enjoyed writing that stuff immensely.

Yet the moment deep, ugly drama moved in here at home, under our roof, made itself at home, and demanded we acknowledge it by addressing it formally as Eugene, the writing dried up. Like dust. Really dry dust. Too close to home, too close to the heart, I guess.

I might not be able to do anything with any of these ideas yet, but I hope to. Here’s to hoping The Man gets a grip (new psychotherapy begins soon) and that our home drama dies a quick, yet horrible death. To put it as my muse says, “Bite me, Eugene.”