(I’m just kidding. The title of this post is a lie. If I were any sort of an authority on Things to Avoid or How to Avoid Them, I wouldn’t have impaled my foot on a porch in January.)
It’s only right that I should make a post about routines and how good they are and how much they contribute to the flow of all of my creative juices (especially the tasty ones) at the outset of a week which has effectively shattered my routine into itty-bitty pieces, stomped on the pieces, dug the pieces out of its grubby shoes, and fed them through a wood chipper. The resultant dust could be used, I’m told, to craft a glitter-bomb which might then be fired at the idiot who put my lunch in the freezer the other day at work, ruining my fruit and by extension my afternoon writing session. Wait, that idiot was me. DONDRAPER YOU, PAST ME.
/Sidenote: I’ve heard of frozen bananas being a delightful treat. Where did I hear this, and what lamebrain banana salesperson perpetrated this myth? The banana I pulled from the freezer went from a dong-shaped brick to a soggy, mushy turdlet in about three minutes flat. It was in no way appetizing, let alone delightful. /Sidenote over.
Time, as they say, marches on. Yesterday’s roadblock felt like a monstrous one. I am happy to say, however, that as with all things, a bit of time and a simple willingness to return to work and keep moving forward have righted the ship. I am sure that it must unnerve some writers to think […]
I was sitting here, polishing off the last of my lunchtime Diet Coke, writing the last three hundred words of my session for today, when all of a sudden I run, full on, into a wall. The throttle was wide open on my Formula One racecar and some inconsiderate dude has built a cinder-block wall in the middle of the track. I was soaring through the sky looking for my next mouse to devour and some entity has clipped my wings. I’m in the cafeteria pounding down some spaghetti and mashed potatoes and the school bully has slammed my face down into my tray.
This is me!
This is a hard stop. A dead-end stop. A flat-out, no-way-around-it, you-are-fargoed stop. One of my characters has just realized (much to my surprise) that she does not want to be there; nay, that she CANNOT stay there. That it is not only a dereliction of duty for her to be there, but that it’s humiliating for her to do so. She not only CAN’T stay in the story as I’m imagining it, she simply WON’T.
My Id-Writer is chewing on the walls because he saw this coming: he feels as she feels, and he knows that this is a decision that I have to let her make. No, deeper than that, he knows that it’s not a decision at all, it’s already done. SHE’S GONE. She’s leaving the hero and his sham of a quest in the rearview and heading for greener pastures. IT’S WHAT SHE NEEDS TO DO, AND IT’S WHAT SHE WILL DO. It can’t be stopped. There’s no way around the grand canyon which has just opened up at my feet. I’ve got to rethink a lot of things.
I’ve hit little snags with the story along the way — little surprises, little deviations from the master plan — but this is off the map. I don’t know how the story continues if one of the two main characters leaves the other in the lurch right now. But it will have to somehow, because I can’t go back and rewrite the things that led up to this moment. Not now. THAT’S WHAT EDITING IS FOR, snarls my Id-Writer, PRESS ON THROUGH THE DARKNESS AND SEEK OUT THE LIGHT. He who turns back is lost.
Tomorrow’s writing session will be an interesting one. I don’t know how I’m going to get twelve hundred words in — or even nine hundred, for that matter — with this goldfinger MOUNTAIN thrown down across my path. I really don’t think I can, and that’s deeply upsetting to me, as I’ve not yet failed to make my writing goal in almost six weeks (!) of writing. Thank goodness the weekend is on the horizon; maybe a few days to ponder will help me to unstick this problem a little bit.
So that’s the bad day.
The good news is, my foot is feeling awesome. For the first few days after the podiatrist it felt rock-solid, then the immediate numbness of the cortisone began to wear off and I had a bit of soreness gnawing at the edges. Today, however, is a new day. I had a nice three-mile run this morning (with the dumb dog in tow) during which I felt no tweaks or twinges, and continuing through the day, the only weirdness I feel in the foot is right after I ice it, and that’s gone within fifteen minutes. So perhaps, perhaps, a return to normalcy is within sight on that front. Goodness knows I could use a nice two-hour run to work on unsticking my story.
Welcome. This is my page for sharing projects associated with my coursework in Media and Technology at the University of West Georgia. Assignments will be posted here as they are completed.
Accidentally Inspired 