It’s a holiday weekend and I really should’ve just bagged on weeknotes altogether, but it’s okay. I wouldn’t be doing this right now if I really didn’t want to.
The tank just ran empty last week. Could be the time of year. The start of Fall semester is always rough at work, even without a pandemic. But between that, the holiday, some minor medical stuff I’m getting taken care of (see below)… well, yeah I only got as far as I got this week.
WRITING
- This week’s writing chain: 4 days
- Total writing days this week: 4 days
- Pieces out on submission: 2
No word one way or the other about the pieces I have out at the moment. That’s okay. I got 4 days in and I actually got some things out of the 3 days I didn’t do anything. In fact, you could say I fucked around in order to find out if there was a better strategy for dealing with moments like this without letting it drag on for weeks and months on end, like I used to.
The first thing was finally recognizing certain cues about this mood I can fall into that makes writing feel impossible, and deciding to just sit and be with them.
There’s something else that I realized tends to happen at times like these: a huge amount random ideas that pop into my head that I write down and file away. I’m pretty sure you could correlate these non-writing times with the volume of stuff I file away in Evernote. Now, I know in my heart of hearts that at least 75% of that stuff is no good. But some of it like, “Okay, maybe… one day.” (Although I’m looking last week’s notes over and just spotted two separate entries that might have a common theme…)
Another thing is the random shit I tend to notice and document, things that could turn into a story of some kind. Like a theory about Gen X music, a random collection of words that made me stop what I was doing, or random scenes that just raise a lot of questions…
Basically, what I found out from fucking around is that maybe, just maybe I don’t have to always try to boostrap, GTD, Pomodoro, or power my way through an empty tank. That maybe I can just let it refill however it’s supposed to without trying to force it to happen, anymore than I can make myself get over a cold.
IN THE WILD
It was a week of non-invasive medical interventions involving steroids and narrow band UVB radiation. Which to a geek like me has all the makings of a superhero origin story! Or, maybe a super-villain story. Hey, either or….
That’s all I got for this week. See you next time!