I don’t know what ran in front of me. I do know that I swerved, over-corrected and saw 
a telephone pole a hell of a lot closer than it should have been. My old Pontiac Vibe slammed the pole. I turned off the engine and knew that I hadn’t been hurt. Three days later, the insurance company declared the car totaled. I found an even older Subaru for sale, bought it, took it to my garage and waited to hear the mechanic’s diagnosis.
The prognosis was not fatal, but grim. $2300. to get the Subaru in good shape. I drove the Subaru home. In two days, the transmission line cracked and the water pump whimpered in its death throes. So did my writing.
I opened the Episode Three of my 29 screenplay and closed it – a dozen times, notwithstanding that my agent had sent it to her co-agent. I avoided working on The Talker, a short story collection my agent wants to see. I played hours of computer Scrabble and Solitaire – and checked my three email accounts again and again. Then, my writing pal – we’ll call him Pal – and I went to lunch. He talked about pressures at work and his resentment. He said that he hadn’t been able to write that morning. Pal writes every day. As I started to tell him that I was balking on the screenplay, I understood: I’d felt picked on by the Big Whatever, the Big Whatever that I believe I serve when I write. I told Pal what I’d just understood. He nodded. “Yep, resentment is the number one offender.”
How is resentment suffocating your writing? Set your timer for twenty minutes. Expect to resist writing. Start here: I resent that…. Please send me what you come up with. And welcome back to breath.
Note: the Pontiac in the picture is not the Vibe. It is an artifact that will appear in the screenplay for 29.
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