prevu -- life of buddy don, chaptur 128: them wurds, them papers

[Author's Note: No doubt you have heard about writer's block, a condition under which a writer becomes unable to write. I don't like to admit that such a problem could affect me, but I notice that I haven't written a chapter on the novel I'm trying to write since August. So I might say that I can write and never get blocked, but who am I kidding besides myself? It's like a man with a bad comb-over acting as if more than one person -- the one in the mirror -- is fooled.

So I acknowledge that I'm having trouble writing the next chapter. I also know that if you want to finish what you start, at some point you have to make yourself write even if your confidence is low or the next chapter challenging. In my case, both are true but not sufficient causes of the problem. The real cause of my not writing is that I can't wean myself from the daily news, especially political news.

On the one hand, this is as important a time as any. On the other, ten years from now, the only thing I'll value will be the fiction I wrote during even this very important time. Commentary on current events is dated almost as soon as it's written; fiction can last forever. I mentally kick myself for not being stronger, better able to resist the temptation to read the pundits and blogs and add my little hillbilly voice to the din.

So as a way of staking myself to moving forward with the writing of life n pinions of buddy don, hillbilly, I've started the next chapter and decided to put the first paragraph in as a promise to myself and all three of my readers to pick up the tale again before letting myself write more "pinions." I have a partial draft written, but I have a long way to go before I finish this chapter, which I hope to do soon. Until then, here's a little preview.]

thangs had been a'brewin fer a while by the time i herd much bout em. twuz rite befor christmus of 1981 that the story gut out n tiz a painful one to rite even now. taint lack nobidy died, but twuz the end of bein able to bleeve thangs wuz how ye had been razed to thank thangs orta be.