Flash Drives Only Work When Inserted

I just spent the last four days gutting and rearranging and otherwise editing one of my previous novels.  I sit down at my computer to pull up the text, and … I don’t have it.  It’s not saved on my computer or either of my two writing flash drives.  This is clearly a sign that I should not, in fact, try to be a writer.  There is no way in hell that I’m retyping that whole book again.  I ran out of firewood last night; maybe I should just use all this paper to light a fire.  While I’m at it, I’ll throw in all the random blog posts from the past couple of years, my notes, and all of my school curriculum.  A funeral pyre seems like the only rational plan for a person who tries to be something they’re not.

The next logical step in my lifelong quest to figure out what I should do with my hours and days and months and years obviously begins with an application to Whole Foods. 

I can’t be a J.D. Salinger.  I can’t build a bunker in my backyard and retreat to it for week-long stretches, ignoring my family.  I don’t have World War II haunting and inspiring me to write inspiringly sad fiction about the state of mankind.  I also don’t have the attention span or the fortitude to create another entirely different family (The Glass clan) with whom I share more in common than my own family.  (I’m also not tall enough.)

I can’t be Ernest Hemingway.  My prose isn’t tight enough, and I tend to ramble on about things which would be better left unsaid.  Hemingway also had a World War about which to reminisce and recount.  I can’t take off to Europe to expatriate myself and sit in a café all day writing about the people who come and go.  (Neither do I have his capacity to consume liquor and alienate my family.)  (And I also can’t grow a fatherly beard.)

I can’t even be that chick who wrote the 50 Shades trilogy.   Could I write some cheesy, shitty, stupid, cliché about S&M?  Probably.  But I would never forgive myself.  My standards are higher than my ability to write.  (I probably couldn’t write her shitty prose either; who am I kidding?)

When I read Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, I thought I should never write again, simple because I can never make magic like that happen in someone’s head.  I’m not creative enough to personify death and make readers feel sorry for him.  All I can do is whine about not saving a manuscript that wasn’t very good in the first place. 

If only I could tap into that place in my head where the original novels and movies stream constantly.  It’s there, because I see the scenes constantly.  I just can’t get them here on this damn screen.