courting insanity

It was an oppositional-defiant, bipolar, obsessive-compulsive week of writing for me, and the attention deficit didn't help, either.

Like a stubborn child, I stared down the dirty laundry collecting in the closet.

I refused to pick up a duster or mop, and I pretended not to notice the yard work pleading for my attention.

Instead, I made up my mind to move ahead with my WIP. No matter what.

I thought about it day and night. I ate my meals in front of my laptop and I stayed up late into the night, determined to get something down. Early every morning I was right back at work again.

www.ccbenjamin.blogspot.com

 

I turned down a luncheon date with a friend and turned off the TV so I could work. Six, eight, ten hours a day.

One minute I loved what I wrote, the next moment I hated it. Optimism alternated with despair. I cut and pasted, saved and deleted until my hands started to cramp up.

I tried to blame the weather. The full moon. The gremlins.

Did I mention paranoia?

Also, as you probably know, I have dogs...

Famke

Macey

...so I had to take them out every so often. And when I did, I had to pick up some of the ten million twigs and branches that came down over the winter. There was a pile of tanbark in front of the house I had to spread. And--oh, look! A squirrel!



www.asknature.com

See what I mean?

But this week will be different. Next weekend I'll be in beautiful midtown Manhattan for a very special wedding and the following weekend is our son's doctoral graduation. This week I'll have to fight the urge to  write. I'll be obsessing over what I'm going to wear!

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Uh-oh.

jan



the four basic truths of writing

There are few things in life we can count on. The rest is pretty much up to us.

We can pretty sure that the sun will rise in the east,

that the tide will recede on time,

and that spring will eventually get here.

 

The universe pretty much follows the rules and Mother Nature does her best to stay on schedule. This is good. It means less for us to worry about because, God knows, we have enough to worry about without having to supervise the cosmos.

 

If you're a writer and you're in the business of creating your own universe, you have plenty to worry about: the story arc, the plot line, characters, and setting. Grammar. Punctuation. Deadlines. Burn out.

 

Thankfully, if you want to write a book, the rules are fairly basic: 

• If you don't try, you'll always wonder how good it might have been.

www.mactoons.com
 

• If you don't start, you'll never finish.

 

 

• If you don't finish it, you'll never publish it.

• If you don't publish it the first time around, you can always begin again...

...because:

www.stylegerms.com

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Speaking of spring, right now in central Pennsylvania, the temperature is 70 degrees, the wind is calm, and the moon is full. Enjoy!
jan