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I've sequestered myself into the living room with the doors shut. I think my phone is ringing.
Currently, I seem to have most of my moments of inspiration while in bed. Lying there quietly and drifting around in my thoughts either right before falling asleep or right after waking up. At night, it's hard to make that decision of getting up to write something down or just fixate on it and hope I'll remember in the morning. In the morning, it's a nice way to start the day, except putting the words down on paper is never as easy or lucid as it is in my thoughts. However, I'm sort of astounded at how I can fill up two pages with words without meaning to, without even getting to the plot or moment I initially brainstormed.
This morning I woke up thinking instead of finishing this short story/possible novel chapter for my packet, I would instead pull out an unrevised story from a few months ago, make some radical changes and rewrites, then send that off. So I pulled it out and gave a look and it would certainly be do-able and would probably take less time but....I just couldn't switch gears. I'm too immersed in my current story. So much so, that I might just mail it off tomorrow because I want to work on it all day without an afternoon deadline, then sleep on it and do more work in the morning and mail it off at noon. I don't have much guilt about this -- granted, last night I spent a couple hours watching Six Feet Under with Lowenstein, but this was after writing all morning, afternoon of therapy and job interview, than an evening of writing. By the time she came home, my brain was fried and I wouldn't have been productive anyway.
At some point in the past 12 hours I've also applied for another job and made it past the first round of applications over e-mail and anticipating a phone interview of the weekend.
I feel compelled to make a note of all this because in the back of mind I still worry that I'm lazy and procrastinating. I'm busy, that's not being lazy. Perhaps I juggle my tasks in imperfect order, but I'm still learning. that doesn't mean lazy. Ok, I admit I procrastinate a little -- it's partly just because I work well under the pressure of deadline, so I try to balance it such that I capitalize on the prime working conditions but also not totally screwing myself over (e.g. my five page paper is only half written, but not only do I know what I want to say in my head, I have a detailed outline on paper and my research notes are organized, so really it's just plugging one into the other, which I'll do faster the day it's due, capitalizing on momentum and fear). With the fiction writing, it's harder to balance. On one hand, it's a craft, it's a discipline, it's persistence and working, and I'm not one who waits on a muse to tell what to write, I just write and some parts come easier than others. On the other hand, if I'm actually engaging in a period of inspiration, I don't want to cut it short for the sake of some page limit or school deadline that's flexible. Also, I feel enormous freedom this semester because my project goals are forcing me to massively revise and rewrite and spend an entire month doing so -- something I didn't build into my last semester, I just sort of waited for inspiration to hit. Not a good attitude.
I've also forgotten to mention that I busted my ass on Wednesday afternoon -- not figuratively, but literally -- on the back stairs of our apartment. My right foot just went out from under me and went all the way down, landing on the right side of my ass, sliding down about 5 steps. I also have a mug full of coffee I spilled all over myself. A shining moment of my life. For the first 24 hours after the fact, I couldn't sit in the same position for more than 20 minutes or so. I could only stand on the train -- the seats were too hard. It's gotten better now that I've discovered the couch is the softest and best spot, but I might take to writing standing up in the kitchen. This has made me rethink my language, since I definitely remember thinking several times on Wednesday that my goal was to bust ass. The universe is tricky that way. It's made me more careful of language. I'm no longer a starving artist but a working artist, because I get too cranky to survive being hungry.
I've stopped making sense to myself. I basically just took a break to make a livejournal enty while the plumber is here fixing the kitchen sink pipe that had a hole so big he could "live in it" and I ended up rambling. Don't mix Vitamin B complex with caffeine and artistic license and imagination, kids.
Currently, I seem to have most of my moments of inspiration while in bed. Lying there quietly and drifting around in my thoughts either right before falling asleep or right after waking up. At night, it's hard to make that decision of getting up to write something down or just fixate on it and hope I'll remember in the morning. In the morning, it's a nice way to start the day, except putting the words down on paper is never as easy or lucid as it is in my thoughts. However, I'm sort of astounded at how I can fill up two pages with words without meaning to, without even getting to the plot or moment I initially brainstormed.
This morning I woke up thinking instead of finishing this short story/possible novel chapter for my packet, I would instead pull out an unrevised story from a few months ago, make some radical changes and rewrites, then send that off. So I pulled it out and gave a look and it would certainly be do-able and would probably take less time but....I just couldn't switch gears. I'm too immersed in my current story. So much so, that I might just mail it off tomorrow because I want to work on it all day without an afternoon deadline, then sleep on it and do more work in the morning and mail it off at noon. I don't have much guilt about this -- granted, last night I spent a couple hours watching Six Feet Under with Lowenstein, but this was after writing all morning, afternoon of therapy and job interview, than an evening of writing. By the time she came home, my brain was fried and I wouldn't have been productive anyway.
At some point in the past 12 hours I've also applied for another job and made it past the first round of applications over e-mail and anticipating a phone interview of the weekend.
I feel compelled to make a note of all this because in the back of mind I still worry that I'm lazy and procrastinating. I'm busy, that's not being lazy. Perhaps I juggle my tasks in imperfect order, but I'm still learning. that doesn't mean lazy. Ok, I admit I procrastinate a little -- it's partly just because I work well under the pressure of deadline, so I try to balance it such that I capitalize on the prime working conditions but also not totally screwing myself over (e.g. my five page paper is only half written, but not only do I know what I want to say in my head, I have a detailed outline on paper and my research notes are organized, so really it's just plugging one into the other, which I'll do faster the day it's due, capitalizing on momentum and fear). With the fiction writing, it's harder to balance. On one hand, it's a craft, it's a discipline, it's persistence and working, and I'm not one who waits on a muse to tell what to write, I just write and some parts come easier than others. On the other hand, if I'm actually engaging in a period of inspiration, I don't want to cut it short for the sake of some page limit or school deadline that's flexible. Also, I feel enormous freedom this semester because my project goals are forcing me to massively revise and rewrite and spend an entire month doing so -- something I didn't build into my last semester, I just sort of waited for inspiration to hit. Not a good attitude.
I've also forgotten to mention that I busted my ass on Wednesday afternoon -- not figuratively, but literally -- on the back stairs of our apartment. My right foot just went out from under me and went all the way down, landing on the right side of my ass, sliding down about 5 steps. I also have a mug full of coffee I spilled all over myself. A shining moment of my life. For the first 24 hours after the fact, I couldn't sit in the same position for more than 20 minutes or so. I could only stand on the train -- the seats were too hard. It's gotten better now that I've discovered the couch is the softest and best spot, but I might take to writing standing up in the kitchen. This has made me rethink my language, since I definitely remember thinking several times on Wednesday that my goal was to bust ass. The universe is tricky that way. It's made me more careful of language. I'm no longer a starving artist but a working artist, because I get too cranky to survive being hungry.
I've stopped making sense to myself. I basically just took a break to make a livejournal enty while the plumber is here fixing the kitchen sink pipe that had a hole so big he could "live in it" and I ended up rambling. Don't mix Vitamin B complex with caffeine and artistic license and imagination, kids.
