Imagine Kenneth Branagh With a Sword

Most of the last mornings as I’ve sat down to write I’ve wanted to describe what I want to write rather than write what I want to write.  This week’s experience isn’t a virgin one.

Intially, and right up to the moment I crafted the first sentence above, I’ve worked to tamp this feeling down.  I drive the desire from my mind and finger tips.  I label it unproductive and and the spawn of my fears.  Laying out what I want to write, telling you what I’m going to tell you, explaining my intentions prior to composing those intentions feels like failure.

Allow me to justify them anyway by talking about hunger.  Every Lent since my Freshman year in college I’ve fasted for the first three days.  No one told me too.  I’m not starving myself because of my poor body image.  I’m not even sure it’s really on the official list of options for the first three days of Lent in Rome.  It’s just something that I wanted to try and that particular spiritual season over twenty years ago seemed like a good enough excuse.  I’ll not go into the details, I’ll only say that day one you can’t think about anything but eating, day two you’re mostly caosting and amazed at the extra time on your hands, and day three is marked by lethargy and bargaining.  It’s day three that applies here.

Writing about writing instead of writing the writing loses the bargain.  It caves to the pressure wanting to write but not wanting to work.  It asks, “Haven’t you written enough?  Isn’t it time for a little break?”  It pleads, “No creativity today.  No fresh story.  No new voice.  No device. No. No. No.”  But all that asking, all the pleading, all the bargaining resides in the same head as the will to do the work the right way.

Maybe this is a justification.  Maybe the louder lazy voice wore me down.  I’ll not deny that voice any longer, but I will reign it.  I will guide it.  I will bend it.  From now on when I want to dodge I’m going to make it productive.  I’ll turn the effort into an outline or I’ll hold myself to the outcome I’ve described.

Bleh.  Good thing I wasn’t going for a St. Crispan’s Day speech.

Day 277

That Which Precipitates May Soon Redisolve

Last night I had planned to pick up where I left of with yesterday’s writing. I refrained from posting that due to its brevity and incompleteness. With a two-day posting I could conceal the meager effort involved. I didn’t pick that up and now I’m admitting to its low quality so I’ve saved nothing. How’s that for 1000 Days transparency?

Overnight, or this morning since I’m unlikely to have remembered anything from last night following sleep, I precipitated an image of a bowl of liquid draped with a cloth sitting on a simple table or pedestal and surrounded by figures of learning. Presumably this image set the scene for some pending magic ritual.

So, cloth on bowl with liquid on a table surrounded by characters wouldn’t initially seem troublesome to write. Except it is in two ways: first–because this is the order I ran into the troubles–is that I’m sure this reflects some real world scenario and quality obliges me to find the true names of such objects; second, I can’t immediately uncover any conflict in the setting. I don’t have the words and even if I did I would know which direction to steer them.

I have a bottle of vodka chilling in the freezer–it’s been there for weeks. Vodka is the primary ingredient for White Russians, Black Russians, and Colorado Bulldogs (I think). There are other ingredients. I may have them, but I doubt it. I’m stalled in my indulgences for lack of knowing. But unlike my trouble with words this morning this vodka trouble is mitigated with a simple search on the Internet. There is an answer and it need only be found.

Anyway, I had something there and eight interruptions from kids pretty much dissolved what ever tenuous hold I had on that.

Word count: 304
Day 214