Got myself all worked up last night, reading.
Todd and I were watching The Stand being broadcast in a marathon session on the Scream Network, nestled in bed. I had my book, the one I wrote about yesterday, and I was taking my time with it, reading piece by piece by piece and thinking it over. Around 11:00pm or so I took out one of my notebooks and just started writing down my thoughts.
I made a list of good choices, the alternatives to actual writing sessions when it feels like I don’t have time to write. I did say feel because I know that 99% I do have the time and choose not to, or make excuses to choose not to. This whole thing is to trick my feeble mind enough times until I realize that each of these excuses is a choice and that I can be productive in short snatches of time.
Two things in particular got me really excited, to the point where I sat in bed thinking, still watching The Stand, unable to sleep.
One, about rituals. Most every writing book you come across will tell you not to build up your writing with rituals. rituals, they say, can become a trap. If you don’t have your special pencil, your drink on ice, your lucky socks, you won’t write at all. But Tharp approaches it from the other angle. We have our rituals for nearly everything else in our life, even work, so why should creativity be the sole exception?
The point of the ritual isn’t to set a list of criteria to meet before any writing can be done, becoming yet another excuse. The purpose is to calm the mind and body and prepare it for work, in this case creative work. Just like you have your morning ritual to prepare for the work day – the order in which you get ready, head to work, settle in – tells you, okay, it’s time to get to it. I think I need that.
And the idea itself is fun. That appeals to me.
Today while exchanging some clothes at the store, I came across this scarf. My mother made a face at it but I love it to pieces – a gauzy shawl, black with white skulls. It’s become my writing scarf. It, along with lighting one thing on fire, be it candle or incense, and a cup of coffee will be my writing ritual for when I go to my office and write. I don’t think I need it when I am out and about; by being out of the house I’m already focused. But for my day’s off, this is what I will do. “Arr, matey, drink your black gold and light your candle. It’s time to write!”
The other idea that kept me awake far too late last night was the idea of a box for every project.
Considering how much I haven’t written, I still manage to accumulate an aweful amount of stuff for each of my projects. Tharp writes about starting a box for each project and how it can help ground you in the beginning, in the middle and in the end. You start by putting in the original sparks and your goals for the project and build it up. It becomes the fertile ground for what you’re growing. If you get a little lost on the way, you can go back to it, see where you started from and what you wanted to do. And when you’re done, it becomes a bit of creative history, one that you can go back to when you need to see where you’ve been.
I get a bizarre joy out of looking at my old journals and notebooks. The color of the ink I used. How loose or how tight the scrawl is. Did I doodle in the corners? What interested me at the time? Maybe it’s narcissism, but at the same time I get the same keen enjoyment when I see how other writers work – their offices, their drafts, what they collect and how they organize it.
So the thought of a box for every project, where all my notes and pictures and music and books and drafts would be in one place? My nifty-radar went gonzo. Now I have four boxes that will be put to work tonight while I pull out my major projects and move them into their new homes. The question of where I’m going to actually put those boxes is something I haven’t thought too much about.
My geeky glee is the only answer I need right now. I’ll trust in it. “Arr!”
PS: I haven’t yet posted to OWW. I haven’t decided what I’m going to post. I only have two completed short stories, one more polished than the other. The submission process is complicated, requiring a lot of formatting. I’m also several thousand words short of my goal for the next Hypergraphic Society meeting, but that’s okay. I have one week to do both – and I will.
