If you are a human being, you will have struggled at least once in your life to complete … something. Be it a kindergarten drawing, a fat reducing exercise regime, your math homework or a scientific experiment designed to disprove the Quantum Zeno Effect.

For writers, it’s not only the struggle to complete the poem, short story or novel, but the struggle to do it right. And by right, I mean, make a finished product that is marketable- and not as a joke, like some of these writers who were touted for really shitty writing.

I mean, unless of course, that’s your bag. I sort of think some people make crappy writing an art, or a jab at humanity, or a jab at my eye socket. Hello Stephenie Meyer. Shout out to Dan Brown.

ANYWAY…

I’m trying to finish book edits on Grand Theft Cargo- the multiple run through in which I finally get all the puzzle pieces to fit perfectly, unless of course you look under the couch cushions and see where I have hidden the extras. (That is all metaphorical, don’t you know? Put down the couch cushions.)

I wrote this sentence, and about a hundred and fifty versions of it.

I would kill for this man. I just wasn’t sure who.

I changed it around, wrote some sentences in front of it and after it, deleted them all, switched positions and pronouns, added adverbs, deleted punctuation, added more, tried it in French, and Spanish. Then… I wore slippers so that I wouldn’t disturb the other writers when I snuck into the kitchen to graze. I stared longingly at the beer in the fridge, the full bottle of rum on the counter. The Cap’n mocking me. Mocking my shabby sentence structure and poor attempt at humor.

I had, after all written a scene in which a bitch poisons- well, okay- drugs a dog.

Yeah.

I felt guilty for not writing as much as I wanted to, until one writer confessed she’d watched a movie, and the other had gone to the beach—in a bikini—on a windy 50 degree day.

Maybe I’m too hard on myself.

What do you say, Cap’n?

Is the Captain your friend?