Stoking the Fires

Most of the time we are not writing.
This is largely due to the Dreaded Day Job.

Ideally, of course, one would either have a job which fuelled the creative juices, or a job which left your mind entirely free for thinking about writing. (All right, ideally one would be able to write as much as one liked with no outside work and an enormous stipend, but join me in the real world for the sake of the argument. Also, bring back the non-ironic use of the gender-neutral indefinite pronoun. Thank you.)

If one does not have such a convenient job, the cold hard reality is that there’s precious little mental space left for the Work In Progress. One has to make the most of what time one has – to stoke and tend the fires of inspiration, so that when time is available. one wants to write – and is ready to write.

The Stoker

So how does one do this?
There are many strategies, but unfortunately a lot of them double as prime forms of procrastination.

Reading about writing is one of my favourites.
Reading books about how to write, books about writers I admire – they fill me with enthusiasm. Reading books in a similar genre or tone to whatever I’m working on – at best, they fill me with an envious delight (I wish I’d written that!) and at worst, they map out pitfalls to avoid in my own work.

The useful thing about reading about writing as opposed to writing itself is that it can be squeezed into any little gap in the day, providing there is a suitable book present.

Do I detect a resemblance?

Picking up a book and reading comes naturally to me (not picking up a book and reading requires concentration and effort), whereas picking up a pen and writing requires preceding thought and usually the spreading of associated papers over a wide area.

Daydreaming about the Work In Progress is even more handy for stolen moments here and there as it requires no paraphernalia. The downside is when one has a earth-shatteringly brilliant idea (perhaps the seed word for one’s WIP) and finds one has no way of writing it down.

Of course, writers are advised to keep pen and paper on their persons at all times, but even writers need to bathe. (please note: words written in condensation on shower walls are seldom legible afterward.)

hooooor

While in the throes of the Dreaded Day Job, one can also use such things as images and music to seize the imagination and recall the mind to the story underway.

Perhaps your DDJ allows you to use a personal music player (of whatever sort) – then play yourself the soundtrack to your tale.
Or images – I often to change the wallpaper on my work computer to something that reminds me of my story, and every time I see it I get a little thrill of excitement, as the story flows through my mind again.

The I of The Forest

In fact (and I am sure I am not the first writer to whom this has occurred), the whole business of feeding the flames of writerhood is remarkably analogous to other forms of devotion – whether human or divine.

We dream of our beloved. We talk about our beloved to anyone who is prepared to listen (or too polite to run away). We cherish art and music that remind us of our beloved, and we want to learn everything there is to know about them.

There is no question here of chores, or duty. Every moment we can snatch with our beloved is a pleasure, a golden trophy plucked from the mire of workaday life.

Tell me, how do you keep your fires burning?

February: a Sense of Identity

Do you have a person in your life whose ego is poisoning your creative well?
I don’t.

I am happy to say that all Julia Cameron’s descriptions of ‘crazymakers’ do not fit with any of the friends and family I have in my life. Admittedly, my roll of friends is not a long one, but quality beats quantity every time (except possibly in NaNoWriMo.)

Of course, it is well known that you can’t choose your family, so my thanks go out to any relatives who may be reading this for not being egomaniacs who insist that my world revolves around them. (I’d send you flowers, but all I seem able to grow are dandelions and buttercups.)

Untitled

However. On with the chapter.
I have already made some mention of the ‘recovery of identity’ theme in my previous post, so, straight on to the Tasks!

Task 2 reveals there are 168 hours in a week, of which I spend 40 at the Dreaded Day Job, five getting to and from the DDJ, and five more of a morning getting ready for the DDJ.

63 hours are spent asleep (if I’m lucky) and 13 either preparing food or eating it. (That seems like a lot. Divide by 21 meals per week and it doesn’t seem quite so gluttonous. I think.)

That leaves about 41 hours for housework, reading, writing, resting, handwork and relationships with God, the universe and everyone.
The proportions thereof would, I think, repay more study than I have so far given them (navel-gazing not being on the above list).

My extended list of imaginary lives (Task 6) now includes a peasant, a princess and a mute. Kind readers will refrain from suggesting how I might incorporate the latter into my everyday life.

'A toutes les femmes qui silencieusement ont construit l'Histoire'

My life pie (Task 7) seems to have been involved in a side-on collision – exercise and romance are doing well, with spirituality holding its own, but friends and play are looking a little saggy and work is – well, the less said about work the better.
Moving on.

Ten tiny changes was a very enjoyable exercise. Although I haven’t done or started all of them, they are mostly quite achievable (#10, eat Weetbix, #5, light a candle).

#2, Have a Teapot, is accomplished, and very enjoyably. It turns out the secret to successful teapot-hunting (besides going when the charity shops are open) is to stop looking for the perfect teapot, and find the good teapot.

Blue Leaf Teapot
This is not my teapot.

The perfect teapot is probably better than the good teapot, yes, but you can’t drink tea out of it until you find it, which could be never. Imagine the prospect of drinking tea disappearing over the event horizon. Shudder. Buy the good teapot.

There’s probably a life lesson in there somewhere.

For my artist’s date, I was going to follow the tradition (i.e. the thing I have done once before) of spending $2, but there was a sale, so this week’s Artist’s Date is brought to you by the number 1.

bubbles

Bubbles!

Do we detect a trend of childlikeness here? Well, what of that? As the Artist’s Way says, don’t drag your inner child to a museum unless they’re that kind of child. Or it’s that kind of museum. (I paraphrase.)

Next month (this month) I delve into Recovering A Sense of Power. Muaahahhahaaah.

Chocolate Zombies

Indeedy. The Chocolate Zombies arose (pardon) from a comment I received on my previous post about the problems posed by early mornings.

“So why have a morning time? This seems to be making it more difficult than it needs to be, almost perverse. Let’s say going to bed at 9:30 is a conscientious early night. So ‘stay up late’ then by making yourself a drink, digging out a small but scrummy little treat e.g. Lindt chocolate, and sitting down to write 9:30 to 10:30 seems more likely to be productive.
So you are that much more of a zombie in the morning, at least the writing happened!
If other activities would be curtailed by this then have other activities in the morning when higher functions are not feasible. Zombies can make a drink, toast the bread and satisfy other appetites. Higher functions happen when brain more likely to be engaged to body.
The chocy is to give you that little zap of energy and to get you over the hump of actually sitting down and doing it. Or is that against the rules?”

I foresaw problems with the method (see my reply for details) but in the interests of mad experimentation scientific thoroughness, I decided to attempt a Chocolate Zombie Experiment.

mad scientist

I chose an evening when I knew I had little to do the following morning (i.e. no lunch to make) in case extra sleep was required (extra to the early getting up I wouldn’t have to do because I’d stayed up late instead – following?)

Part One of the Experiment: Chocolate, began at 9:30 pm, as per spec.
I bade the Caped Gooseberry a fond good-night, consumed a morsel of tasty chocolate which a kind Providence had fated to my fridge, and started to write. (Full disclosure: I skipped the drink because I had just finished one, and the essence of a good late night is that the following sleep be undisturbed, i.e. Don’t Drink Too Much Before Going To Bed. Too much disclosure? I think so. Moving on.)

I decided to have a stab – perhaps more of a prolonged hack – at Tsifira, my current project-I-should-be-working-on. I wrote by hand – slower, but I find the ideas flow better that way – with a Faber Castell fountain pen and an exercise book stuffed with loose bits of paper on which I had written things I wanted to remember. (A sensible person might perhaps have consolidated all this into a practical array of notes at the back of the book, but what gives you the idea that I’m a sensible person?)

Overall, it went quite well.
I managed to write 5 1/2 A4 pages of double-spaced scrawl in one hour, which led to an unsurprising hand cramp and a surprising lack of eponymous inkiness of hand. Writing neatly is more compact but slower: ideas jostling like penguins on the ice-floe of the conscious mind tend to slip off and be eaten by the Sea Lions of Forgetfulness and the Polar Bears of Went-Down-A-Different-Leg-Of-The-Trousers-of-Time.

So far so good.
I toddled off to bed at half past ten, (interrupting, I fear, the repose of the Caped Gooseberry) and attempted to sleep.
It took a while. Too many penguins on the loose.

“…about a tenth of the cabin trunks were full of vivid, and often painful or uncomfortable memories of her past life; the other nine-tenths were full of penguins, which surprised her. Insofar as she recognised at all that she was dreaming, she realised that she must be exploring her own subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was very clear what the other nine-tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins.” Douglas Adams – The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

Once I had got all my penguins safely stowed (including a few zombie penguins risen from the maw of the Sea Lions of Forgetfulness), all was well.

Until that dratted alarm went off, thus beginning Part Two of the Experiment: Zombie.

World Alarm Clock - Grove Passage, London

Really, is it beyond the bounds of human ingenuity to come up with a sound that is able to wake a sound sleeper but doesn’t induce that kind of psyche-stripping galvanic jump that leaves you quivering under the blankets as your bedmate nurses their bruises?

The usual madness to my method, I should point out, is to have two alarms – the first wakes me up, and the second tells me it’s time to get up.
This provides a useful quarter-hour interlude in which to reassemble my conscious brain, figure out which way is up, what day it is and why I should bother eventually getting out of bed, today of all days – or more often, fall asleep again (hence the importance of the second alarm).

This particular morning I was well asleep when the second alarm burst in, and consequently went through the whole galvanic thing again.
I staggered into my clothes and went the usual round of morning duties (minus the lunch), feeling fuggy-brained and not daring to attempt the toaster. I felt behind-hand all the way through, but to my surprise, managed to leave for work on time.

After a rough day at the office

Here is where I discovered the achilles heel of zombies. They are not built for speed. They lurch. My time allowance for getting to work is based on being able to sustain a reasonable clip (approx. 6km/h), and my body just wasn’t feeling it. I pushed it harder, and it responded with faint nausea and a cloying sense of deoxygenation. I slowed.

I made it to work a few minutes late, but fortunately not so late as to draw raised eyebrows from the Powers That Be. (To be that late, you need to take the bus.)

I felt dim and brainless for the better part of the morning (thus making it the worser part) and made a few stupid, though fortunately inconsequential, mistakes.

To be fair, some of the dimness may have been due to the fact that I didn’t have time in this shorter morning to make a cup of tea (all right, pedants, I had time to make, but not consume, which is after all the point). However, I had one as soon as I got to work and the brainlessness failed to recede, so perhaps not. (Braaaiiins…)

In summation: the Chocolate part of the Experiment was productive and enjoyable (apart from the hand cramp and the minor sleep issues) but the Zombie part was neither and I think this tends to outweigh the Chocolate part, at least when seen in the light of an ongoing routine.
Now and then, particularly if I don’t have work the following day, I may resurrect it again. (Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Pardon.)