psycho writer

I can barely contain myself.  It is like I just found someone in the universe that I really relate to.  And it was a chance meeting…

As a fledgling blogger, I am learning what this process is supposed to look like – and one of the components I’ve seen mentioned in numerous articles I’ve read say I should be reading other blogs to see what’s out there.  Good research…any amateur writer knows that.  

So I try to find other bloggers talking about things that sound like my life. I’m not looking in the political arenas, or the techie closets – mine is just the mundane with a psycho twist.  Hard to find that category in the WordPress index of themes, but today was different.  In their business section (who knew?) I notice a blurb that catches my eye and changes my day and maybe my life!  Words from a nationally exhibited working artist– trying to wrap her head around getting her life in order.  What a relief!  It’s not just me.  I’m not the only one struggling with which comes first the chicken or the egg – do I write first, or clean first?  Am I not productive artistically because I’m not organized or am I not organized because I’m not writing?

Now, I know most of you reading this today (or should I say posted today – read on a Thursday as I get the feeling that my readership is sneaking peaks at their workplace and really can’t afford to until they are well into their work week and sufficiently caught up…) have better things to do than to be inspired, entertained or motivated by blogs.  It is my personal goal each week to keep you sufficiently engaged to keep coming back for more of my own musings..let alone expose you to the big dogs in blogworld so don’t feel pressured to click on the link to read some really good writing…

I’m not the kind of disciplined writer that has a set pattern to my day – a this-is-when-I-work-so-do-not-dare-interrupt-me.  Nor does my inspiration come to me like that.  Much too random.  Much too chaotic. Take today for instance – “to do” lists aren’t really part of how my brain functions. It’s more of a kaleidoscope of things moving around in my brain like a pseudo LSD trip you’d see on a bad music video from the 60’s…forms emerge, retreat, morph into other things.  That is a typical day for me.

I am understandably fragile and moody and easily given over to whim. When that flow starts out my fingers – the rest of the day can settle into whatever.  It’ll all be good from the moment my curser moves to the “publish” button and it’s public. But if that inspiration isn’t quite ripe yet, then it’s a arduous process.  Like the urges we feel when we need to go to that one room of the house…but things weren’t really in “place”…you get my drift.

Worse yet, when I finally find that inspiration waiting quietly like a dust bunny in the corner – and something happens…a phone call, a knock at the door, a “can you tell me where…?”, or “what were you thinking about for lunch?” (the answer is always, “I wasn’t”) – and poof…the magic moment is gone and I’m deflated and feel like I have to start all over again.  Little noises, subtle squeaks in the floor, the cat meowing – anything can derail my train of thought.  So today I’ve decided – since my workspace is too public, too accessible – I will only write in the dead of night.  It is the only Do Not Disturb time when I’m not in peril. 

Actually I’m trying to figure out if I’m more frustrated by having started this process after 25 years “off” and not having the perfect writing environment or was I better off never having started back and having all the pressure mounting inside my head unexpressed.  See why I’m certifiably psycho?

I think it’s better having started writing…I think I am making progress.  I did take 500 lbs. of old magazines from a pile on my dining room floor and into the drop box at the hospital for re-purposing.  That felt good. And shredded bunches of junk mail just in time for the recycle pick-up tomorrow. Baby steps, right?  Baby steps. And today I have to wash my hair.  I may be on a roll here.

Just in time for me to pack up and go back to do the same thing at Billy’s. But what writer would be put off by being back in the space with such potential great ideas for future blogs?  It’d be like a sculpture artist passing on a trip to see Michelangelo’s David.