View: a little on the “meh” side this week.
I spent so much time staring out the window that I rearranged the physical view in hopes that my mental view would change. All week long I faced my laptop, but nothing much happened. I’m not sure why. No excuses here, but it got me wondering why it is that some weeks my output flows, and then others it fizzles to a barely discernable trickle.
It’s the weirdest thing. Nothing changed this week. No stressors. Ah, but perhaps that’s it. No stressors! Through last week I was gung-ho to finish a revision for an agent. I was PUMPED. The revision was a beautiful thing, and I knew to the core of my physical being that I was improving the manuscript. It just felt good, you know what I mean? I sent it off one week ago.
Then, this week — fizzle-city. I re-read where I’d left off on another revision, and after the headiness of my previous effort, this revision felt flat. Good news: I think I figured out what’s not right about it, thus far, which is a huge part of the battle. And I did get words down on paper — I did. Just not so much is all.
But, okay, in a fit of frustration I did buy the decorative kale you see in the image, and I did set piggy beside that sickly lily, poor thing. I kept pondering how to cook up kale, however. I like kale okay, but, come on now, not that much.
As a friend wrote in an email message this morning about her own window-staring: Taking a break, it seems.
Apparently, the brain wants what it wants at times, and no amount of striving and self-flaggelation on my part is going to change its stubborn mind. Hey, Brain, vacation’s over come Monday! Uhm, okay, pretty please?
0 comments on “View From the Writer’s Desk”
I wish I could harness those days when the energy flows and brings the words along with it. It’s unpredictable.
Flannery O’Connor once advised a writer friend to show up in the same place every day, because if a good idea came around it would know where to find her. I’m always flitting from one place to another, so the good ideas have to work pretty hard to catch up with me!
Hah! I’m glad you reminded me of the O’Connor thing! It’s kind of true, isn’t it? I, too, feel like I’m flitting around too much. I’m being inconsisten, which I need to get a handle on…
I have every sympathy. My brain is most definitely on strike right now. It’s a wonderful idea to have a routine, but there isn’t a time (apart from late at night which is never good) that I could regularly turn up at my desk. It still sounds like a good idea, though…. Good luck with the revisions. I often find what I sit on for a bit is actually much better when it finally appears on the page. Dreaming time is not just restorative, but can be surreptitiously creative, too.
Thanks, litlove, and thanks for visiting. I’m glad to be back out here! I’m hoping this is one of the period’s I will later describe as the calm before the creative storm.