Stuck

I've been stuck for a year and a half now. I'm not the person I used to be, the person feared by underclass English wannabes and liked by professors. But I guess the stagnation of my academic self started before my cancer, when I came to Oxford and became a graduate student. The creative writing program made me feel like an academic poser, and while I was a student, it didn't bother me, because I still got good grades and my professors more or less liked me, and I loved teaching...the program just wasn't a challenge in the way I like to be challenged. And I didn't care about saying intelligent things in class as much, because I felt like I couldn't compete with the meaningless drivel that some (not all - some) of my classmates, especially in my writing classes, spewed out. Because creative writing classes are more or less bullshit. At least so far as they "teach" you how to write. I could read every book ever written on creative writing and still not write something I could be proud of, because the idea is the key to any good piece of writing, at least where my writing is concerned. When I have a well thought out idea for a story, the thing writes itself and I am usually somewhat pleased with it. But the idea isn't something I can draw out of a ton of research. (Research helps, certainly, which is why I have a book on Vietnamese Oral Literature on my desk, and it's a book that's probably sold less than a hundred copies, ever. But research is not an end result; it's an alternative fuel source to my creative machine that can keep the engine going for a little while. Eventually, though, the machine needs several gallons of ideas or the engine burns up.) The idea has to percolate in my head until it's ready to come out on paper. And my novel has been percolating in my head for three and a half years, and it really doesn't feel anywhere near ready to come out on paper. And meanwhile I yearn for something scientific, something I can outline and solve and propose theories for. Maybe I just need to treat my novel more like a science fair experiment. Maybe a scientific treatment of a creative endeavor can bring some intellectual meaning back to my life.