quod me nutrit me destruit

Colour me depressed and frustrated.

I spent most of the last week trying to write. Specifically trying to write an untitled short story about characters who may or may not resemble Hugin and Munin (Odin's ravens from Norse myth). You see, I had this discussion with my mother...

Me: "I'm probably going to drop out of my PhD. I don't want to, but I just can't work on it. I don't have the mental faculties at the moment."
Her: "I understand that. It would be a shame to drop out of it but your health is probably going to continue to be a problem."

(Paraphrasing, by the way.)

Me: "And the only creative thing I can do is game stuff."
Her: "It worries me that all your creative energy goes into role-playing. I think, you should focus on your writing. You know, something you could earn a living doing."
Me (thinks): Earn money? Writing?
Me: "Err... it's actually really difficult to make a living just writing. I mean, you have to make a name for yourself first. And write things that will sell. Like Michael Crichton."
Her: "But you shouldn't have any difficulty doing that."
Me (thinks): Ah crap.
Me: "Yes Mum."

The rest of the conversation was just her talking about writing what people want to read and how easy that is and me saying "Yes Mum" alot. However, she had a point (in terms of focusing on the writing and - I cannot stress this enough - not about writing what people want to sell rather than what I want to write). Cue me back to trying to do any writing that might resemble something that isn't complete crap.

The problem is that my internal thesaurus has short-circuited and every phrase I write is boring. The characters are very cool, the narrative nifty, the structure is getting there, I finally managed to find Munin's voice, but the phrasing is... boring. Dull. Uninspired. Stale.

Hence the depressed and frustrated. I spend all day trying to write the same damn thing - sometimes I even feel like I'm getting somewhere - but when I read over what I've done, it's bland. I'm supposed to be Jeanette Winterson, Neil Gaiman, Nick Bantock, not Don Delilo, not Nicholas Sparks.

Okay, so writing is, by its nature, frustrating. But normally it is almost good frustration. Progress can be made, words found, phrasing tweaked. This is bad frustration: just day after day after day of complete shit. Psi keeps saying I should try writing something else. But this is the story that's in my head, that wants to be written. And it's just not working.

Writing is my life. I need to write or I end up depressed and frustrated. But now the writing is what's making me depressed and frustrated. Quod me nutrit me destruit.

Anyone want to cheer me up by reading the damn thing (well, what I have of the damn thing) and telling me how to fix it?