It is not a failure. It is not a failure. It is not a failure.

Okay, if I keep repeating that it's not a failure, then clearly I'm fighting the feeling that I've failed.

Argh! So much for Vania 3.0, right?

Acting, and poor life decision making, has managed to keep me from tackling this. Or maybe they are simply filling in the gap that is left from the writer's block. Or likely, there is some mixture of the two extremes.

Needless to say, no more journaling has been done. The writing desk is covered in bills and pillows and blankets (from my niece's Christmas visit) and I've been consumed this month with memorizing lines for my role in a two person play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (http://www.theatreknoxville.com), opening February 12th and playing through March 7. Now, granted this is definitely consuming a lot of my available time. And I have positioned myself otherwise well by taking part in the Tennessee Stage Company's New Play Festival, where I get to read parts in new, unproduced plays, and study and critique where they fail.

But no writing is issuing forth. When I sit down and prepare, I freeze. Nothing comes forth. I have a writing notebook that I carry with me, and I do indeed take notes in it. I bought $200 worth of easel and over-sized board room pads and pens and tape so I could cover my wall with story ideas. They are mostly empty. I have three large sheets of paper that say list the topic of the ideas I have in mind for that sheet. And there they have been for a few weeks now.

I started making progress on a short story, but ideas just weren't coming. No good ideas, anyway.

I came up with a new notion that I am going to try. A game. Pick a story that fits closest to one of the stories I have in my head, and use it as a guide, a template. A starting point.

The Great American Existential Novel is there!

Sigh.