A little betwixt and between weather wise here on Skinny Island today, full overcast, muggy and still, but with tornado warnings due to heavy weather to our north.  No rain here yet though.  A purgatory, if you will, made for other musings, and some word work.

Absorbed in novel crafting for eight hours or so.  Would love to talk about the story, but have found, sadly, that to do so makes it go away.  Nothing especially magical or mysterious about that, it’s simply that telling is telling and, once told, it’s out there and gone.  The impetus is lost.  Maybe there’s a little superstition in there, and if so, it’s the only one I have about writing; no special hat, or shirt, or working barefoot; just hard work. Anyway, it has to be kept on paper, or, in this case, in cyber space until finished.  But the process can be talked about, is cathartic, and maybe even a little interesting.

I can think of nothing requiring more discipline, which is strange, because I am not a very disciplined person in any other aspect of my life.  It was a hard lesson to learn, and ultimately came down to, still does, nailing one’s butt to the chair and making it happen.  Inspiration comes from effort.  You start with some kind of idea, of course, often vague, but then it’s just about hammering out some concrete evidence of that idea, learning what it’s about as you go.  When I am working on something I set a goal of a thousand words a day.  Sometimes I put in more than that, and that’s a bonus, but I can’t get up until I have those thousand words.  With that as the framework, something interesting usually occurs.  It actually starts to flow, and with it a concentration akin to meditation.  Absorption.  One places oneself in the narrative, not as creator, necessarily, but as participant.  You get into the heads of your characters, ideally, thinking their thoughts, and it doesn’t end when you get up from the keyboard.  To complete a work as long as a novel requires months of this.  I think that is why many writers, historically, are drinkers.  Sometimes it becomes necessary to turn it all off.  A pitfall, for sure, but then there is the excitement of getting back in there in the morning.  Early on you should read from the beginning before starting the day’s work, to sustain the continuity, but when there gets to be too many pages to do that, you read from the day before; it should be part of the DNA by then anyway.

Not every day flows, of course.  Some days there is a lot of staring at the computer screen, and, in my case, a lot of walking around.  In this capacity writers are notorious for finding something, anything, to keep from going back to the chair.  Refrigerators are your best friend; music; calisthenics.  Then you remember the rule about just writing a simple declarative sentence, and you’re off and running again.  Thinking too much is a bad thing.  The thinking about the story happens when you’re sleeping.  Something back there is always working on it.

Sunny days distract me.  I want to be out in it.  We need days of purgatory like this now and again to goose things along.  That said, I think it’s time for a drink.  Happy writing.