The Ties That Bind Tripped Me

The trick isn't about creating new problems. It's about solving the existing ones.  When I'm editing, I feel that my subconscious is trying to maneuver through the problems while my conscious self is consistently getting itself into trouble.

How do you disentangle yourself when you end up tied into knots in your jump rope?  I had an epiphany last night after writing on how to get myself out, but I was so incredibly exhausted, I couldn't put enough thought together to integrate it in properly.  So I had to just pray I'd remember how to weave my magic today almost 24 hours later.

Tip: That's not the best course of action.  If you have any drive or alertness in the fiber of any of your being, summon it and get back to work.  Unless you realize you are entangling yourself more.  Then abandon all hope and hide in a corner, sucking your thumb until morning.  Then repeat process.

Oh goodness me, what have I gotten myself into?  Why did I think I could summit such a monstrous thing as this?  It's not like it's just a book or anything...

What are your methods to undo a mass of knots and tangles in a section of a story?  Where you felt inspiration but conveniently ended up painting yourself into the far corner without a bathroom?

Any comments and suggestions are always welcome.  I'm going to make another attempt.  Let's see how this goes.

Rocket Man

Zero hour: 9 a.m.

For some reason this song seems so perfect right now.  I'm not the man they think I am at all.  I feel like I'm walking around my small little nook of the world carrying a piece of me that no one knows about.  That is, besides those who know me very well.  Besides my immediate family and a few very close friends, who truly knows me?

Who truly knows the worlds inside me? Who truly sees what lies hidden within my mind, my heart, my fingertips?

I am so fortunate that so many have paved the way in revealing their stories.  I am blessed to have been allowed access to so many other authors' dreams.  Take a moment and just think of all the books you have read, the stories you've heard, the lives and love and loss you've shared in them.  Think of who they came from.  We know so much more about humanity and its beauty than we realize.

Pick up a book, and you are picking up a piece of a person.  You are sharing in their thoughts, their hopes, their tragedies.  You are allowing a piece of them to become a piece of you.

I am in awe, and my heart aches. My fingers aren't fast enough, my mind isn't strong enough, and I weep. 

I am always going, unwilling to give up no matter the amount of time it takes.  But I have never felt so heavy and so light as when I contemplate how far I have come and how far I have yet to go.  I take a deep breath, let it out as I collect myself. And I continue on. 

Staring at Nothing

And I wonder: what will it be like tonight? What will I write, what will I advent? The whole point of this exercise, this post tonight is to roll the dough out underneath my fingers and get it nice and thin.  Roll out the creativity before me, get it nice and spread out before me so all I can see are my words and my worlds and then I can begin to etch them out of the vastness before me.

The point is to take it all and cast my normal everyday aside so I can pull from the depths of myself and find my characters waiting to show me what they've been up to since I was away and where it is all going to go someday.

I feel the waves begin to crash further into the shore.  The tide is still coming in.  Soon it will falter and the tide will begin to wash back out.  I must ready my vessel, so I can ride out with the going tide and sail upon the waters in this brisk beautiful moonlight.  The stars above will guide me.

And so it goes, and so it goes. And so it will always go.

Sleeping Sisters

While two little ones drift into dreams beside me, I, myself, drift into a waking dream of a world I've spun.

While two nestle and snuggle into their rest, their breathing slowing and evening into a soft whisper of waves upon the Eastern shore, my breathing slows and evens as I envelope myself into my written word.

While their bodies relax and the lullaby plays out into silence, my body relaxes and the silence blossoms into the narration of my heart.

As they slumber in the peace of the room, my soul alights in the fire of inspiration, and I am awakened in my verse.

I have waited all day and late into the evening for this...

Blackberry Lemonade

I've had some flights of fancy, finding the inspired winds and allowing myself to flow along them like a leaf caught up in the trail of it all.  And I've had my moments where I, the leaf, have gotten entangled in a branch and had to painstakingly extricate myself and wait again for that wind to blow.

It has been wondrous and chaotic and adventurous and worrying and more.  I am enraptured in it all because on it goes and on it flows.  So long as I keep coming back and doing all I can maybe someday I can do it everyday, all day and late into the night if need be.  And no longer would I be shackled to the idea of hiding away myself in order to "be the adult."

I may be an adult, but still will I forever dance in the rain and watch the wind flow through the leaves of the tree on a blanket in Spring.  Still will I forever be me and that I will never change.  Still will I forever dream, and still will I forever wish on a dandelion star, and still will I gaze at the stars above and wonder about the heavens beyond.

That is who I am.  That is who I always will be.  And that is my writing.  How I hope for it to be.

But without hard work, I know, nothing grows but weeds (Quote taken from the great mind of Gordon B. Hinckley).

A Storm's Beguiling

I was speeding along so quickly yet not quickly enough for my own whirlwind of inspiration.  And then it came.  Blowing in from the west southwest, came a storm wrapping our home in lightning, thunder, wind, and rain and taking our electricity with it.

It attempted to steal my fire with sirens keening somewhere amidst the storm, barely heard but sounding nonetheless.  My husband and I gathered our half-asleep children into the bathroom and we camped out for 20 minutes on the floor with our pillows and blankets.

Finally the sirens ceased, we put our children to bed and the storm finally began to ease somewhat so I could continue with my writing, albeit still without power.

Thankfully my computer still had a 31% charge.  So I finished out my chapter and was forced to call it a night.

The adventure was within and without my mind.  But thankfully both sides came out faring well on the other end.

Another chapter is down in a new edit.  And now I begin the next.  The prospect is most exciting,
and the sparks from my fingers are beginning to fire once more.

The Gossamer Touch

Oh Lois Lowry, how your magical writing inspires me!

I feel the touch, the touch of the author's hand.  It is stronger in me than it has been in a long time.  I haven't felt this clear about a path in writing since I wrote a short story called The Loose Thread.  I wrote it in one edit*.  And there it was for all to see. 

*I have since edited the story here and there so don't ever think anyone is that good.  But at the time, I went over and over and over it and could find little to edit in the story.  I will say that the majority of edits with that story were grammatical errors and sentence structure.

Do you have a moment, a tempered flash of when that clarity hits? It is a rare thing and I feel led by a hand other than my own.  I merely try to keep up.

Reveling in Readership

You know that time when you feel that you've rediscovered something wonderful? That moment when joy and glee and light and wonder just touches you once again.  Reading is just heaven.

It makes me want to write.

In joy and glee and light and wonder, I write.