I commented to my husband earlier this week, while I was sitting at my desk and staring at a bookshelf across the room, that I may be reaching that point of avoiding writing in which I start doing weird things like vacuuming the cats, re-grouting the tub, or organizing the library. I pointed at the books, telling him that I couldn’t decide just how to set the section of myths and folklore in order, but did he think geographically would be best? And what about Indian & Eskimo Artifacts of North America? Would that be better here or should it be moved to the art section across the house in another room?
I was only half-serious. I mean, the task of ordering my library is important, at least to me, and I expect it to take a lifetime as there will be constant changes. Artifacts is there on the myths shelf (and, digression, why is it shelf for a single shelf, but also for the entire five-shelf bookshelf? Am I using the right words here?) because I want it for specific research on a currently-nebulous story idea. Before I let that one gel into something, I need to finish some of the projects nearer to hand.
I have been more focused on setting my house in order than I have on writing. Which doesn’t mean writing isn’t there in my back brain, huddled in a corner whimpering. Simply that coaxing coherent story out of that mental compartment is going to take time to soothe and calm and untie all the knots like a yarn ball the cats have been after, chasing round and round the house until you’ve got the scissors and are telling the big blue eyes blinking up at you oh-so-innocently that it’s a good think you’re cute, you little monster. Why do I write, again? These mental knots can’t be good for me, where I’ve snipped and pulled and gathered it up again to tie it into something resembling a plot.
On the other hand, could I justify my library without the research driving it? Or the writing funding it’s expansion? Why not. Libraries, like small children, kittens, and butterflies, don’t need to justify their existence. They simply make the world better by their presences. The expansion funding is a solid point. I probably should shake that potential treat box and see if it helps the back-brain back-burner look up and pay attention to what I want. I’ll give you more books if you help me write this one?
The writer’s brain is a perverse place, I’m telling you. Not that most of you don’t already know that, it’s why you come here, isn’t it? Not that misery loves company, no. More that I’m not the only one, thank ghu, whose brain acts like that.
So what does work to coax the story out? I have techniques, and sometimes they work. Mostly, though, what they require is time, and that seems to be in very short supply for me right now. I’ve been working, hard, at carving more of it out to use for creative stuff, and it’s starting to help. Perhaps soon I’ll have enough mental space to get the story unstuck and flowing again. Hopefully. I’m not sure you all want much more of this kind of mental silliness foisted off on you.
I’m going to be very firm, this upcoming week. Artifacts stays where it is, on the shelf, and I take the typewriter into my art room, where there is no computer unless I carry in one of the laptops, and shut myself up for an hour. The cats are not allowed. Oh, what am I thinking? I have to let the cats in or they shove their paws under the door and lament in small sad squeaks which will not help at all. Sigh. See the working conditions I’m in here?
Mad Genius Club 
7 responses to “For Your Consideration”
I jot a note in my Little Black Idea Book, then ignore it. Then I come back a while later and just start scribbling, see if anything can come of the idea. Sometimes yes, sometimes no, sometimes it just needs a different frame around it and it slides into a longer story.
I’ve not been writing as much as I “should,” because Day Job, but the ideas are all but pounding on the door, demanding to get in and be set on paper.
I have been reduced to Breakfast Words the last month or so. And which ever one of you Geniuses (Geni?) handed me that trick, thank you!
Ten words written before I am allowed to eat breakfast usually turn into a hundred or more, which is still pretty puny, but it beats zero!
At the moment I am “quilting” that is, stitching three ideas together to form a complex plot. Or garbage. Hard to say, at this point.
Actually, I thought Breakfast Words were Laura Montgomery’s idea…
Good idea with the ideas. It helps me build complete stories.
I’m overflowing with ideas for various entries in my current series in process, and constantly scribbling down plot notes that accumulate in fat piles.
What’s getting in my way of actual writing is some form of anxiety: financial security (real estate development), health (my husband’s), age (my ticking cognitive time bomb), and a fundamental desire for order: I want my bank accounts balanced / my office shelves rearranged / my cabin cleaned (that’ll be the day) / my desk sorted down to visible wood / my random crises dealt with first. Yes, if I spent more time doing that stuff and less avoiding it, I’d “be better off” (said in accents derived from The Quiet Man).
The worst distractions are the competing shiny objects — I’ve revived my Scandie folk fiddling after a hiatus following chemo/numb fingertips, and I’m running/performing in a (men’s) Barbershop Quartet (as a tenor), which keeps me busy. It’s not that I like them better than writing, but they’re my primary excuse for external in-person socialization, and there are people dependent on me as part of that.
And then… it’s an election year…
There aren’t enough hours in the bloody day!
I’m on week 6 of some nasty respiratory thing or other, and working erratically on the climax of the current WIP, which is one of those Rule of Cool things I came up with back before I started writing it. Then I choreographed it a couple months ago, and now I have to get buy-in from the characters and work out all the fiddly details I wasn’t worried about before.
I’m on month 6 of the 3 months to revise/edit/rewrite my WIP. Scribblus interrruptus from illness (mine) husband’s health in general, and the fact that my house could star in Hoarders but needs cleaning up first.
Today I am prepping for a trip. Even when I will be in places that have a drugstore and they speak English, this is stressful for me. No writing today…but I will take the laptop with me for the inevitable down time.