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.