Tag: writing

Tea and Toast

Sick today. Third day that I consider myself sick. I’d felt it coming on last week and tried to avert it, but by Sunday a cold was marking my throat and my head was congested and throbbing. It worsened Monday. Last night was unpleasant. Sleep has stayed away like it was afraid of catching my cold.

On a side note to that, it’s weird that toast and tea makes me feel so much better when I have a cold. Other than a tangelo, Larabar (key lime) and a cup of coffee while writing, tea and toast has been my sustenance for the past two days. That combo definitely makes me feel better. It might be a panacea effect because tea and toast is what’s always been recommended to me.

So, sick, not on my deathbed, but sick enough to ponder whether I could and should go out to write. I’d gotten about four hours of sleep last night and my head feels like Buddy Rich, Phil Collins, John Bonham, and Keith Moon are having a drum-off.

That lack of sleep left me vulnerable to phantom writing throughout the night. My WIP haunted me, and I felt it was an imperative that I write today. I wouldn’t do any (well, much) walking, but I would write.

So, it’s been successfully completed. Eighteen hundred words and some editing completed. But, my Ibuprofen has worn off, my ears are stopped up, and my nose continues its impressive Niagara Falls imitation. I’m done writing like crazy. Time to return home for some tea and toast.

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Turbidity

My writing streams rushed together. The words and ideas became turbulent, muddied and entangled, becoming too much, too much. 

What had happened?

It’s always in me to be analytical and introspective, to explain and try to understand myself, in hopes that I can reach productive and lasting peace with myself. So I asked, what happened to the writing process. I was writing. The flows of words and ideas were strong and potent. I was almost keeping up. Then, overnight, it unraveled.

In the stillness of my pre-walking walks, insights arrived.

  1. The flows were too intense. I’d been keeping up. Now, I’d failed. I wanted to write everything at once. Chaos resulted from impatience.
  2. I’d seen the movie Black Panther. I enjoyed it, but it was a catalyst for new ideas. Just like I sometimes – hell, most of the time – read a book and enjoy it, I wanted to incorporate new thoughts and directions, because I liked how them in the movie. A purge of that was required.
  3. Doubts; I was suffering doubts about whether I was up to understanding the story, and keeping up as a writer sufficiently to present the story.

Thinking and walking it out helped walk me back from the metaphorical ledge of despair on which I found myself. Well, I’m off the ledge but I remain a little unsettled. Write through it, I tell myself, and hope to hell that works. Oddly, while walking, I thought about a dream I had, and that helped a great deal to come to a palatable understanding about my inner dynamics and anxieties.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Margaret Said

I think this sentiment distills the essence of writing down to the basics. Just keep going past doubts, hopes, and word counts until you’ve found the beginning and the end.

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Wickedly Aggressive

You ever been writing and catch fire? The words blaze through you and onto the page, forcing you to do your best to keep up. It’s an exhausting but exuberant process, oddly like scoring a touchdown or do something else that requires focus, attention, and energy.

Then you stop writing to attend to the mundane requirements of life, but the writing doesn’t stop. It keeps flowing. Changing metaphors, it’s like rivers overflowing its banks, flooding you with more of the story that you’re writing. Great, but so damn distracting, because it’s consuming your energy, removing you from normal conversations and interactions. You become short-tempered and irritated with others because your energy is pouring into the writing pouring into you.

And then, it won’t stop at the day’s end. Your body and brain are ready for sleep, but the writing continues in your mind, refusing to be stopped.

I’m not complaining, though, just pointing out that sometimes, those muses can be wickedly aggressive.

Okay, time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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