I am reading John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, so far a wonderful, if religious, book. It reminds me of a lesson I have to remind myself while writing: reach the reader’s emotions. Irving’s book focuses on sadness, an emotion I’m intimately familiar with: It is my favorite emotion. (I won’t get into what that says about me.) Sadness reminds me of what I have and, more importantly, what I’m missing.

Eliciting fake emotions is worse than ignoring them. An emotion that is gratuitous—i.e., does the story no service—is useless. I read a story in The New Yorker a while back about the death of a child. The author interspersed two stories. In the first, a married couple was about to have sex when they received a call that a car hit their child while she was walking home from a friend’s house. The second discussed the history of asteroids hitting the earth, and the future chances of one destroying the earth. I cried during the story, but I felt like a fool. The author brought me to a brink just to push me over. There was no purpose to the first part of the story (unless you count the author’s weak allegory). In case you’re curious, the child died, but it turned out to be another couple’s child. The dead child had borrowed their daughter’s license to get into an R-rated movie. Cheap tears. That’s not something I want to achieve.

Who knew finding a seat in Borders would be such an ordeal? I usually write in the bucks of stars, but today I thought I’d be original and drive to Borders. I didn’t realize the difficulty that that decision would create. I’ve spent the last twenty minutes pretending to browse the audio book section. While I am looking for a new audio book—I finished The Da Vinci Code a week ago—I’ve already browsed Borders’ selection and found it wanting. I’m walking around in circles waiting for someone to get up from their comfortable, leather chair.

It took three full circuits for one of the readers to rise. I made my move when he looked around his chair for forgotten items. I found a particularly uninteresting audio book on the history of the communist party placed near his chair. After he finally left his chair (an ordeal that took another five minute), I looked left, looked right and leaped into his warm chair. Two other people were making the rounds looking for chairs. They made the mistake of browsing the history section, which is two rows away from the brown chairs. Suckers.

I didn’t take my computer into Borders. I’m writing these notes in my Moleskine, which I’m enjoying. (Obviously, I’ve since transcribed these notes and turned them into readable prose. Besides my poor handwriting, I don’t do much editing in my journal.) It’s nice to have something to write in whenever a thought strikes me. While it is awkward in my pocket, it is worth the slight discomfort.

I’ve discovered a problem with my Moleskine. Since I’ve given up consternating in these entries, I’ve found that the journal is the perfect place to pick up right where I left off. I’ve been focusing on inner dialogue, ignoring the more descriptive and clever writings. As I wrote in my journal after I realized that I spent the last five pages writing consternation about writing, “Now that’s hilarious.” I’ll share some with you:

I just need to fight through my disgust and write. It’s hard. I have a severe internal critic that depresses and stops me from writing. He reads my prose and ridicules it until I don’t see the use in continuing. The critic is not always wrong. He’s very good at identifying when I’ve written something particularly good. Regrettably, most of the time he takes my uninspired drivel and laughs until I have no choice but to give it up in disgust.

How do I silence my internal critic so even on my bad days I will continue to write (and not write these useless consternations)? If the demon wielded just words or thoughts, he wouldn’t affect me. But it’s more. He has the power to manipulate my emotional state. He makes me feel awful and useless about my writing and weakens my resolve to continue. In short, he depresses the hell out of me.

He needs a name. I will call this demon Carl. Carl is at the end of all my unfinished stories. He gloats in the middle of my musings when he senses my mind and focus wandering. Carl takes my pages of story notes and convinces me that I will never be able to turn those scribbles into insightful stories. Carl whispers into my ear that I’m too old to start telling stories; too old to rediscover the creativity I buried when I was a child. Carl’s idea of fun is to let me jack up on caffeine and then rip the words away from me, leaving me jumpy and full of energy, but no avenue to release that energy. Carl loosens my lips when I want to complain and bitch about writing, but then shuts off the spigot when I try to redirect the flow to storytelling.

Carl yells to anyone that will listen that I am not a storyteller. He points out that I’m not even much of a talker. I argue like an overpaid lawyer, but when I try to put those words into my character’s mouth, Carl stands on the top of my pen and wags his finger, telling me that I’m not good enough and the lines are flat. Even now, as I get to the end of this section, Carl is laughing and saying, ‘no more.’ I’m leaving this part and trying to come to some resolution. Carl doesn’t like resolutions.

Carl, let me write my crap! Let me write page after page of drivel that goes nowhere. I know it is bad writing. I know it is a bad story, but it is my bad story, and the only way I’m going to write it is to write through the uninspired and embarrassing sections until I arrive at the good sections. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to them, but I have to try. I have to find quiet time, glue my ass to the chair, and just write. I have to battle Carl until ignoring him becomes second nature.

Once you name something, you develop power over it. Carl, I name you and call you out. I will stop focusing on my bad, useless paragraphs and keep going in my stories. Even if I have to cut ninety percent of my writing, it will be worth it.

Next up: the demon Lenny, the bringer of laziness and apathy.

I haven’t lost my love of the consternation. I should turn it into an art form. I sometimes think I have more skills in this area than I will ever have in storytelling. (You hear Carl in this, don’t you?)

“I’ve never met anyone as intelligent and yet so clueless. He can have the most insightful conversation and follow it up by doing the stupidest thing.”