Digging through the Jell-O

It's a dreary Monday morning, overcast and drizzly. I've turned on the standing lamp but it doesn't seem to do much to drive off the intrusive bleak grey filtering in through the windows. I keep doing things beside writing, like reading things on the Internet and feeding the cat. Well, alright: the cat-feeding is necessary. But it isn't writing. Nor is getting up to get a second cup of tea in the hopes that its honey-soaked caffeinated goodness will kick my brain awake, though the first one seems to have rather failed at that task. It's something to do beside sit here and stare at the screen with the knowledge that I've not a decent idea for this blog.

I have writing projects, oh yes. At least three character-based projects and a smattering of short stories that need to be worked on. I feel a little like I do sometimes during National Novel Writing Month, when I'm behind on my quota and I'm just ... empty. I hate this feeling. An obvious solution, the cure for writer's block, is to just write something. I've given this advice to people, having learned it's true for myself. But there are days it's not so easy to push past that invisible wall of emptiness, hoping to find something bright and shiny on the other side. This is one of those days. I've been having a lot of them recently, and to be honest I've not tried as hard as I might to conquer the feeling, to get to the prize.

It's there, though, that prize. I can see it glimmering faintly through the clear Jell-O of this wall of blah. Pardon me whilst I go dig for it. Pass me the shovel, will you?

The Mountain of Monday

I'm not sure what to write about today, but it's almost nine o'clock and I'd better get something written. I had a busy week last week and I ended it exhausted but determined to Get Things Done starting today. Last night there were loud, flashy thunderstorms which served to keep me from sleeping properly. I awoke with the memory of a dreamed conversation with my father: "Make sure you remember the address of the lot the house is on." I've been groggy all morning so far, even with tea.

My drive to Get Things Done seems to have faded, drummed out by August-like conditions this weekend and the rhythm of the rain overnight. But Buddha Cat is still looking up toward me. He is relentless and silently demanding, encouraging. So I guess I'd better get started.

I have, among non-writing-related tasks this week, what may amount to an inordinate amount of phone calling to do. It might be that the task looks bigger than it is from where I sit right now: trying to wake up, listening to the sounds of cars driving by on the wet road, drawing some spark from the cool air drifting in the window and the sounds of neighbourhood birds calling outside, feeling the weight of not enough sleep on my brain. I dislike spending long amounts of time on the phone. I have a headset to help me work in the background and prevent arm and ear weariness whilst on hold. But the calls are not something I'm looking forward to today. In fact, I suspect I'm going to drag the writing portion of my morning out to forestall the inevitable slog, the questions and statements and explanations repeated over and over to each new person on the phone who doesn't know I've just told this exact thing to five other people this morning, so forgive me if I'm a little short.

I finally have what I need to continue my work for my business client, too. I've gotten out of the habit of doing that work, so there's another thing to get worked into the day. The paperwork sits, waiting to be assessed and tabulated, in plastic grocery bags on my study floor.

On Friday I was so motivated, feeling so accomplished, ready to take on my obligations head-on. It was a great feeling. True to form, though, it's Monday and weariness and the desire to do things other than what needs done are pulling at me. "Ooh, what's in the email?" my monkey mind asks. "Did you feed the cat?" the Judge demands, narrowing his imagined eyes at me. "Can't we just lay down for a few minutes?" whines the part of me where the tiredness lives.

The email can wait. The cat is fed: if she were hungry she'd come scratching at my door. And no, we can't lay down. There's things to be done today, and they won't do themselves. I'm gonna be busy today. I'll see you all later.

Good with the bad

I can't seem to get going today. My mind keeps wandering in vague circles of procrastination, edging around looking for something else to do other than write in here. Hung up on the details of phone conversations actually completed this morning, as opposed to the frustration of yesterday, of being unable to reach the invisible parties on the other end of the line, I'm pleased to have made the connection, but clouded as to how best to use the information so gleaned.

Yeah, I just listened to the poetry reading on Writer's Almanac. That's kind of a mess of a thing up there, but I'm going to leave it. Good with the bad.

I almost wrote a State of the Blog post today, as I'm still weighing my options for the future home of this blog. If you have time, please look at Drops of Blood on My Forehead on Wordpress and Blogger and give me any opinions you may have of them. I'm compiling some data on my experiences in composing entries in each and their look once they're finished, but it's not much. So far VOX is the clear winner, with Wordpress a near second. So I'm working with Blogger today, planning this week to play with the CSS, as it's most customisable here (and free to do so!), and I do have some experience in working with it. I just haven't been much in a CSS mood lately.

I tend to stick to one kind of work at a time - if I'm writing, I tend not to want to configure Linux (still have no wireless internet on it) or tweak HTML or CSS. Instead I want to draw or play with conlangs or work on role-playing game ideas. So I've mostly been composing in VOX, as I know exactly how to get the results I want there, and they export nicely to WordPress.

One thing I do need on this blog if I'm to move it is a header image. I could grab a picture off the internet and tweak it up in Gimp or Paint Shop, but I think it's far wiser to create my own. I'd love a picture of a finely-crafted fountain pen, perhaps a mug or a typewriter, some typed sheets of paper. I don't own a finely crafted fountain pen, but I do have the other things. I could take some photos and tinker this week.

So I'm flailing a bit so far this week. Kindly bear with me. This too shall pass. I will get back to my fiction writing. You may well see bits of it in here in weeks to come. I'll be rearranging my schedule to get me to sit down with my fiction-writing Muse and focus less on non-fiction things, though, you know, I have at least three articles for Associated Content I need to start/write/finish. Sigh. Somehow there's never enough time in the day. It's time to make some. More on that later.

Pressure and Deadlines: The Fire Beneath Your Butt

"Writers are attuned to deadlines. Most, as students, wrote their term papers the night before they were due. We are energized by impending doom, motivated by a sense that now the work really must be completed; someone is waiting for it." -- Susan Shaugnessy, Walking On Alligators





"A deadline is, simply put, optimism in its most ass-kicking form. ... Because in the artistic realms, deadlines do much more than just get projects finished. They serve as creative midwives, as enthusiastic shepherds adept at plucking the timid inspirations that lurk in the wings of our imaginations and flinging them bodily into the bright light of day." -- Chris Baty, No Plot? No Problem!

Raise your hand if you've ever written a term paper on the bus on the way to school because you'd put it off for two weeks. Yeah, that's what I thought. Anyone who's done any writing for a class, whether it be a term paper or a short story, knows how it feels to wake up with the cold realisation that it's due. Today. And it's not finished yet. It may not even be started. "Crap," we may think, "and I was going to really try to do a fantastic job on this thing this time. Oh well. Let's get it banged out so at least I don't get an incomplete for not turning it in."

My school life was full of such thoughts. As a long-time hard-core procrastinator, I frequently stuck my fingers in my metaphorical ears and sang, "La la la, I'm not listening!" when I had a project to do. It's the most difficult for me to get started. Once I get the work begun I find I build up a sense of momentum and it's easier to carry on. But when the realisation dawns that this five-page paper I've conveniently shuffled to the back of my mind for two weeks is due in three hours, some of which need to be spent doing things like eating and riding or walking to school, panic sets in. And panic is never, in my experience, conducive to writing something as pedestrian as a term paper.

It can be useful for fiction writing, though. National Novel Writing Month is a perfect example. Your plan is to write about 1600 words each day. Not a big task. If you start to slip, though, if you miss a day of writing, or put up a low word count for the day, the task gets bigger. Now you need even more words to catch up. At the end I'm usually behind at least somewhat, and that 'Oh My God I have to HURRY or I'll fail!' feeling sets in.

And I write. I write like the house is on fire and sometimes it's contrived and stupid, with wooden dialogue and idiotic plot leaps. But sometimes it's good. Sometimes my characters surprise me, for good or for ill. When a secondary character suddenly runs off to war unexpectedly, it can be great for the word count, but potentially bad for the plot, which spirals off in an unintended and perhaps useless direction. More often than not, though, I find that those side-tracks can lead to more character development and even a subplot all their own.

There's a feeling of triumph, of accomplishment when a thing is done. When I've finished up in here, particularly after beating Blogger with a stick on the days I'm composing my initial post in it, I feel like I've made a checkmark in a worthwhile box. "Well," I think, "that's finished. Maybe now I should feed the cat. She's been trying to paw my door down for half an hour."

I write here in this blog six days out of seven. Even bloggers get a chance to rest, right? I sit down and write nearly every day because I know someone is reading it. And even if those people aren't waiting with bated breath for the next post to appear, it means something to me that they're waiting. They're anticipating. And it gives me the motivation to deliver. Even on days when my mind is being crazy and coming up with all kinds of weirdnesses, it's part of the process and it's my dim hope that someone's entertained by it. My audience forms my deadline, the expectation that I'll produce this blog (nearly) every day, and gives me the motivation to write.

A Morning for Meandering

I've spent half an hour playing around on Toasted Cheese's site instead of writing in here. I am a bad, bad, blog writer. I also have typoitis today, apparently. My rate of typos is up about seventy-five percent. Possibly more. I don't chart these things, but it's a lot worse than usual. I blame squirrels.

As usual, I'm working in Kubuntu in the not-quite-as-warm-as-usual study, with my classical music stream streaming along in VLC. I decided on a whim to reduce the opacity of my text editor window so I can see my desktop through it, so it looks like I'm typing over top of a beautiful Caribbean beach. "Look!" say the tourists behind the camera, "there are words floating in the air, being typed with a plethora of typos which are then being backspaced over and corrected, before my very eyes! Hey, mysterious typer in the sky, you got some typo issues, don't'cha?"

Yeah, we covered that already. But I suppose you were too busy ordering your girly drink to have noticed the beginning of this document, eh?

Clearly, I am in some kind of odd mood today. But this is my privilege, as I am a writer, and weird-ass moods are where we get some of our best stuff.

As I was perusing Toasted Cheese, I recalled Jasper Fforde's series of books about the Bookworld. I've touted the Bookworld in other journals I've kept online before, but let me do so here: go read these books. Begin with "An Eyre Affair" and move onward from there. Ever wonder what the characters in your favourite stories do when they're not being read? I didn't think so. Read. You'll find out. Fforde's stories are hilarious and brilliant. Anyone who loves to read should grab them up straight away. Go! Go to your local library and seize them!

Ahem. See aforementioned odd mood. Yeah. This is probably the least professional-looking blog I've done in here since deciding to dedicated myself to writing about writing (almost) every day.

I mentioned the Bookworld novels because Toasted Cheese had for sale a tote bag emblazoned with the words 'Boojum Hunter'. The word 'boojum', in Fforde's novels, refers to a jurisfiction agent (read the books) who gets lost in a previously unexplored novel. It's used as a verb in the Bookworld, but, having not read the books in a while, I had the thought that there was a something called a boojum which attacked bookpeople. I don't think this is true, and if you go read the books, you'll be able to tell me if I'm wrong!

Anyway, my apologies for taking time from your day to be random at you. But this, too, is an aspect of my writing life: the 'what the heck /is/ this, really?' bit where ideas float around in the air near my head like twisted, broken little dragonflies, each whispering fragments of coherent thoughts which are lost in the incessant twittering of the mass of them. May your dragonflies fly in formation today.