It sometimes seems like I’m fighting - everything. Myself, my environment, my schedule, my kids, my life - all things seem to conspire and align in direct opposition to my grabbing time for writing. Now, of course, that’s not the truth. Yeah…I have a busy, semi-complicated kind of life. But hell, who doesn’t? I’m sure it’s the rare author of any piece of writing these days who has the utter luxury of doing NOTHING else with their time save write….or think about their writing…or plot out their writing…or sleep in between writing jaunts. The point being, everyone has a life. Some are simpler than others, but really it’s all relative. Even the simplest of lives offers distractions, detours, land mines. It occurs to me, I’m ashamed to admit how belatedly, that it’s all in how we respond to these things. And in my very lack of response, I’ve been allowing circumstance to write this book ( or not write it as the case may be) for me. Sobering. Frustrating. Hopefully awakening. Just as the book can’t write itself. It can’t be allowed to moulder through my seeming inability to be proactive.
In my head…and here. It seems such a simple thing. Quit bitching woman, and write. In the time you spent here, you might have eked out another paragraph or two. But in practice, it’s something else altogether. And there’s me staring at the cursor, stymied again, or typing one slow, agonizing word after another.
Bahhh…I’m sick of my own whining.
Days. Days have gone by a few sentences here, a paragraph there. Literary constipation is no more comfortable than the physical kind. Rather in the same vein it leaves one feeling bloated and sloth-like. Like my brain is over-stuffed with the ideas I know I need to get on the page. They’re all cramped up in there together, fighting each other to be embodied in type-face. Nothing is more frustrating than staring at that blinking cursor, KNOWING what needs to happen next, but unable to form the thought properly into words. The only way to describe it, is like overloading a circuit. Too much power funneled through a narrow conduit…and flooey! it all goes to hell.
I need to figure out a way to spin it out onto the page, without losing focus, or track of where I am. Maybe that’s just practice. Maybe I’ll be able to do it more naturally once the arc and fall of writing becomes second nature. Or….maybe I’ll just suck at it.
On an entirely unrelated note…I managed to live through fast day. At points, it really blew. Headache, kind of listless and groggy all day. But, I’m glad I managed it. So now I have till next friday when I have to do it again.
Well, I had a writing night last night. That for me means a few hours uninterrupted where I don’t have to think about anything but the page in front of me. It was slow. Involving much hair pulling and muttering. But I wrangled three pages. Three good pages?? Most likely not, but I’m trying to learn to just get it down and keep moving. Inertia has been my worst enemy, that and second guessing. The constant - I could do better than that. What the hell was I thinking? But If I cave to that, I’ll write a book consisting of one paragraph, rewritten thousands of times, polished, homogenized, and sterilized till it resembles nothing so much as a jumble of nonsensical letters and symbols. I’m back to the, “Get it down. Get it down.” mantra. Just get the bones on the page and flesh them out later.
Today is fast day one of the cleanse process. It being just shy of 10am, I don’t really have a clear view of how it will progress. The juice is ok, if somewhat acidic. I’ll let you know tomorrow.
There’s been a bit of re-working on the entire cleanse idea. I spent Monday and Tuesday sick, unable to keep much down. So the official start of things was today. Two shakes, which I have to say have a terrifying consistency if you don’t use more liquid than is recommended (think snot here) and are a disturbing shade of green. And one balanced meal. It went allright, save for the skull-splitting headache I got in the late afternoon…one that decided to linger till the evening. All I can say, is my poor, toxin laden body better be thanking me for this crap.
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