"Wuz" up with that??

Christie's last blog kind of tickled me: "to be or not to be...definitely not to be."

It tickled my brain and pushed me to review my own writing and analyze the lazy writer in me. The time came to look at this objectively. I've written story after journal after poem about writer's block, which I believe relates to laziness, lack of motivation or inspiration, and tapping out of ideas or fresh writing. Still, I lack the strategies to overcome my issues. I certainly never thought to deconstruct my issues and comb through my own words for signs of hope.

I went looking for the laggard verb in one of my pieces that I love and often use as a sample that represents my writing style. Happily, I didn't find too many. However, I did noticed a pattern: when actually interested in what I'm saying, I don't reach for the "to be" crutch. In forcibly stringing sentences together, fighting through unwavering hesistance or lack of confidnce, the lazy writer emerges. Case in point:

Successful passage (one slipped in):
The post-nap glow screeched to a jarring stop when he finally awoke, hot, aggravated, dripping and slimy with his sweat, the daily nuisance and consequence of his HIV+ status that plagued him with rage and melancholy, tainting his bloodstream. Almost automatically, our nap led us into, what sometimes felt like, our respective trenches, places where our battles turn into crying games and are rich with talk of death, pain, regret—where each tear drop is acidic.

Unsuccessful passage (five irrupted my train of thought): I was endlessly sensitive to my friend, nearly embracing, or at least anticipating, his erratic behavior. It was laborious, but I loved him then. His health operated like a rollercoaster. It was never steady, with deep drops and sharp turns; it was unpredictably topsy-turvy. I was there for him, unequivocally, for a relatively short, but critical part of his precious, delicate life, that could fade into black with bad cold.

Reviewing my writing reinforced the point made in Hale's book that overusing "to be" makes a writer appear inexperienced, uncomfortable, and lacking acuity with words. The glimmer of hope I revealed through my words is that while it seems difficult to nix the comfortable habit, it isn't all that hard. My "successful passage" proves that point. Writing isn't a race, so there's no reason to rest on empty words to convey complex ideas with no good reason. Taking the time to push everything to the next level will make the difference between saying something and being expressive.

Christie's blog articulates this idea of being expressive beautifully, reminding herself that writing is akin to composing a written picture. In that case, I would compare using "to be" with using the Arial typeface for a dynamic design/layout composition, in that "yeah, you can use it, but why when there are so many other interesting typefaces to use..."

To be a writer, I must write.

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I see you bubbling all over the place -- you're yeasty, and I think it's grand!