It’s snowing again here. It’s notable from the standpoint that I grew up here, and growing up we almost never had anything close to serious snow. Years of half-inch dustings frustrated the young me, who wanted nothing more than a mid-week vacation, enforced, where maybe we’d get to light a fire in the fireplace.
Granted, I mostly just wanted to avoid school. I enjoyed playing in the snow to an extent, but even then I would contemplate wet, clammy socks, runny noses, sharp, tingling fingertips, the blindness that comes from glasses fogged up with my own breath. It was an act of will to play in the snow, even then, though one easily made. Because it happened so rarely.
After I spent several winters in Boston, the magic of snow wore off pretty quickly. In Virginia, snow was typically a novelty. In New England, it is far more ubiquitous, a given that inches will pile up every few weeks, and cars will get frozen into large, gray cocoons of ice. It didn’t take long to start hating the stuff, especially when I was riding my bike in a blizzard to go open the video store, passing cars the whole way, fishtailing and cursing my fingerless gloves.
Once I left Boston, I left behind my hatred of snow. I didn’t live in snowy regions. Even when I was in New York, it was hard to hate the stuff, though that might have something to do with my being drunk on red wine and bourbon almost the entire time I lived there. I’d actually forgotten what it was like to hate snow until two feet of it dropped on Charlottesville last month, leaving me stranded at home, alone, with no shovel, and a gammy foot, threatening to cancel Xmas.
So what’s that got to do with creating things? I have no fucking clue. It’s snowing again. It’s supposed to accumulate. More snow on top of the snow we got last weekend that canceled plans, and more snow coming this weekend that will cancel more plans. I sat down to write about my own stalled-out creative process, and out came three hundred words about snow.
Maybe it has something to do with The Shining.
I was actually just thinking about that as I was getting out of the car with my milk and bread. (Which, by the way, I was going to buy anyway today. It’s not like I panicked and went to the store; I was going to the store, and it started snowing before I could get there.) The snow has definitely made me pretty stir crazy. Not just the snow, but the relapsing problems with my foot that prevent me from walking great distances sometimes. Before, walking a couple miles in the snow wouldn’t be a problem. Now, it is. Or can be. Or maybe it’d be fine going out but coming back would be hell. It’s not knowing, I think, that has gotten to me, has built a mindset where I feel completely trapped. I shouldn’t walk, so I can’t walk. And the snow means that confines me to my house until the plows come down my cul-de-sac. Trapped.
Which is all well and good when you don’t have to be anyplace. Like when I was a kid, and looked forward to being trapped, because I didn’t really want to go to school, and it’s not like I had anything else that had to be done. Trapped can be a great excuse for a party, or for a day of rest, a day of meditation. Trapped can be happy, peaceful, fun. But me, if I have the least amount of work that needs to be done Out There, even if it’s days away, the snow now gets me feeling a little paranoid and nuts. The Whatif monster hides behind my chair and whispers at me. Whatif I can’t drive? Whatif I can’t get to work? Whatif I get trapped here and can’t get anything done?
I haven’t been writing much. To be fair, I haven’t been writing at all. I wrote a way-overdue thank-you note to my aunt today, and I think it was the first time I’d done anything more than update Twitter since the Richard posts. I… I have been feeling trapped. Creatively, I mean. Stir-crazy. Like I can’t go anywhere or do anything. Like a part of me isn’t working correctly, and it prevents me from getting anything done. I suppose there’s some hope if I figured out a way of turning a long, contemplative journal entry about snow into a metaphor for my lack of product, but then, I always did have a weakness for such things.
Jigsaw Season Four was halfway written. Ten episodes scripted, albeit in need of polish. This is past tense. I kept on not writing, and not writing, and doing everything but write. It finally dawned on me why — it wasn’t that I was lazy, it wasn’t that I was lacking discipline. It was that I didn’t think the new episodes were funny. Oh, they’re interesting, and ambitious, and the structure is way better than previous episodes. They push my writing to a place I’ve never gone, and the plot is as detailed and intricate as I’ve ever written. But they’re just not funny. Like, at all. To me, anyway. There are jokes, and there are moments that are quite good. But overall, I look at what I’ve got and I just don’t care.
It dawned on me that, as nobody was paying me for these things, I could just throw them out. Sure, I was quoted in the paper as saying the new season would start… nowish. Sure, it’s been a year (!) since there was any sort of regular Jigsaw thing. These are facts that make me feel guilty, pressure that certainly ups the stakes in my brain. But I’d rather be late than suck. Actually, I don’t even care if I suck. I just want to suck in a way I enjoy. Right now I have the luxury of doing that.
Although, that may just be a justification. At this point, I’ve been trapped in the snow so long (metaphorically if not literally) I don’t remember what it’s like to… not wear boots? (Feel free to leave better allegories in the comments.) For better or for worse, I’m going to force myself to write more. Starting today. With this. That you have just read.
I don’t pretend to know if anybody is paying attention. But then, I’m used to that with the show. For now I’m going to force at least 1000 words out every day on this blog. Some of it will be Jigsaw related, some of it may be media reviews, some may be short stories, some may be random head-pounding, and much will likely be utter crap. But I assure you, after a few weeks, I’ll have a better idea of when the new season is actually going to happen, and what it’s likely to be.
For now, I think I’ll go drink some red wine and watch the snow.
