Writing and Pondering

Well, let’s start this week off with a bang, I’ve been writing a book since March and I am making my best attempt to finish it by June. The first draft that is. And so far so good, it's the fastest I’ve ever had a story come together and the easiest flow to stay in. I’m just passing the 25,000 word mark this week and it feels great. 

I don’t know how to talk much about the creative process outside of my book writing because in all honesty its been weeks since I’ve picked up a paintbrush. The simple excuse is that my studio is in the basement and away from the sun and I want desperately to sit in the sun. The acceptable excuse is that I am so invested in my writing I don’t want to stop to paint. The raw uncomfortable excuse is that I don’t really want to paint because it feels like work. I think painting has started to feel high stakes and so I’ve been hiding away in my writing. 

All my excuses in tow are varying degrees of understandable, I think I understand digital artist now. Concrete classical visual arts require set up and take down and clean up, and it’s a lot work. And when I do my calculations of how much time I spent on a painting I forget to count all the time I spent watching my brushes. And adjusting my easel, and mixing my paint, and sketching my tests, and pouring my varnish, and standing on my chair to get a different perspective. All and all I think I spend more time circling my paintings with set up and clean up and then I do actually painting. 

But back to the writing. I got my first taste of a bit of writers block this week, not a real helping of the stuff but a whiff. I was sitting at my computer on Wednesday staring at a mostly blank page. I had stopped the day before at a clean break in the story and I wasn’t sure how or where exactly to pick the story back up from. I sat there for half an hour staring at the screen, tapping my fingers and thinking myself into irritation. Finally I got up and went outside to sit for awhile. Within less than 15 minutes I had my idea and direction and was ready to get to work. 

So here’s the thing, in that moment staring at the screen till my eyes bleed wasn’t going to help, sometimes I need to just muscle my way through and push on. But this week the most productive thing I did was sit on my front porch for 10 minutes and remain still. I knew the problem wasn’t what was written it was what was in me at the time. That break before even starting helped me to see what was missing and I ended up writing one of my most favourite scenes so far. 

The scene in question is this, hopefully, amazing break down of character and backsliding that makes her emotional joinery just that much more believable and real. Because the thing about healing is that it doesn’t tend to happen all at once. Even when it does, the humanness of us will always return to what is most familiar at least once, even if that is pain. 

As an artist and someone with ninja like quirks, to say that you won’t know I have a character shattering quirk until its upon you and festering, I have to take breaks more than I think I need to. I can be obsessive, which is mistaken for driven, and I have to remember to take breaks and not be angry about being interrupted by my own bodily needs. I have to recognize the need of a break as a normal part of the process not a great cosmic inconvenience. Needing to taking breaks is an obvious thing to most people I think but to me its something I have to concisely remind myself of.

So to sum it all up, creativity has been flowing and writing has been happening and painting has been avoided. All in all I am exactly where I expect myself to be and I could not and would not hold myself to any higher of a standard than I am already achieving. Next week I’ll give an update on how likely I am to finishing the first draft by June. When the first draft is complete I will be ready to share a few more specific details about the story and the character so stay tuned!