Summer progresses
Prologue: this isn’t the post I sat down to write, but it’s the one that come out, so it’s the one the world’s getting.
The weekdays have settled nicely into Hot Summer Routine. My internal alarm clock wakes me between 7 and 8 AM, which means I can have tea & do morning puzzles outside on the porch or patio before the sun hits them. Then it’s time for breakfast, upcoming calendar/scheduling consultation with Spouseman (don’t picture anything exciting, I’m talking stuff like laundry, grocery needs, meal ideas) and then it’s up to the office with tea and determination.
Summer is storm, fire & flood season, so, I do my Big Disaster checks first: the Airnow.gov air quality map, Accuweather, NHC.gov and Watch Duty. If I’m feeling brave, I read the day’s 1440 report & the previous day’s WTF Just Happened post. If I’m not feeling brave (most days) I leave the human news for the end of the workday. Either way, once I’m up to speed on the State Of The Outside World, I decompress with another cuppa, some exercise, and a chapter or two of reading. The exercise might be playing with hand weights, doing stretches and PT-style yoga, taking a yard patrol and pulling 10 weeds, or taking the cat for a 5 minute carry. Reading might be the current fluff book, my Required Summer Reading (aka Hugo Awards nominees) my own writing, or just a longform article that catches my eye. The tea will always be, ya know, tea.
Back to the desk to clear away all the Life Cobwebs. Check Habitica for any morning chore items I forgot (there’s always something) tidying up all the daily/weekly/monthly tasks that need to be scheduled, filed, paid, communicated, or otherwise Dealt With. (Again, there’s always something.) Read and send emails, mail, and texts, pay bills, check accounts, and so on.
Somehow it’s usually lunch time before all that’s done. On a good day I get in plenty of useful research while I’m online hypothetically doing all the other morning things. It’s astonishing how a check of an Arizona wildfire can make me notice how the river and canyon look, which piques curiosity about geology, which becomes a dive into Illinois glacial features, which turns into a literary article of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Gold Bug, and boom, ideas for my Treasure Haunt puzzles start falling into place like, well, puzzle pieces. (FWIW there was also a digression into “proper technique for Romanian deadlifts” and a quick visit to Chewy.com to order a new cat brush during the same desk session as the geology-land surveys-historic ciphers-mysteries.)
Once I’ve made a lunch so my stomach is no longer gnawing a hole in my spine, obtained the day’s second pot of tea, and done more Moving Around to settle my brain back down after eating, I’m finally ready to “work.” Yeah, it’s mid afternoon, and I’ve wasted most of the day according to all the Experts On Creative Success, but there it is. Even worse, if there are big stresses or distractions—like oh, home maintenance being done, roadwork RIGHT OUTSIDE, scheduled appointments, etc—the work day is pretty much blown.
Once upon a time I did a lot of writing late into the night, but these days my brain reliably turns to mush around 9 or 10 PM and fall asleep at the keyboard when I try.
Sure, I could structure my workdays differently, do all the things the experts say to try. Prioritize my creative time more, put my writing first, protect my time, all those good and reasonable measures. I have, five days out of seven “free,” and only work half days outside the home on the other two.
Thing is, I’ve tried those tricks and many more. Multiple times. 1) I know what I’m doing is not a process that produces lots of words quickly and I would like to write more and faster, of course I would, and 2) it’s really, REALLY hard to fight the psychological/social pressure to do things the way that works for so many other people.
Did it work? Nope. Never. More than once attempting the “sit down to write before doing anything else, with no pressure for it to be anything worth keeping” demolished my motivation to write anything at all for weeks/months. Hm. Actually, I haven’t touched the novel I drafted that way in nine years and don’t really see revisiting it any time soon.
ANYway. Brain wins every cage fight. So despite the twinges of “I’m Doing It Wrong” guilt that consistently crop up whenever I see discourse on creative process, I’ll stick with my current roller coaster cycling between pinball focus and hyperfocus.
I't’s a fun ride.
Okay, that’s enough. Cat pic, and we’re done. Here’s Pips helping me get things done this morning.
Big brown cat lounging on a black IKEA rocker decorated rainbow saddle blanket. He likes that seat because the downdraft from the ceiling fan ruffles his fur.
Until later!