Sometimes when I sit down to write I feel like a dog going round and round and round in his bed trying to find just the right angle before he settles down. I walk around my house and try this seat or that. I decide that I am much more creative at the bookstore surrounded by all the words that actually made onto a page. When I get there, if someone is sitting at MY table, the middle one, by the wall with an outlet in case my battery goes dead, I panic. So I am forced to go to option # 2- A cozy armchair by the middle grade section. Its the chair with a tea stain on the right edge of the cushion. If thats not available, I wipe the sweat away thats trickling down my left temple and force myself to option #3- Be flexible and know you can write anywhere (this, of course, is the very last option since its the most unfathomable). After finding the perfect or mostly perfect seat, I get my grande green tea latte, no syrup, saving the bag of almond purchase for a future distraction. I put on my headphones and click on my Itunes WRITING PLAYLIST. Its a continuous loop of mostly the same song because I once , while listening to it in 2006, wrote one incredibly beautiful sentence. Also, maybe that way there wont be any surprises of a random upbeat song that might take me out of my blank stare or make me think of my boyfriend or food. Then I check FB, my emails and get into an obsessive search on how to erase wrinkles overnight. I then take several deep breaths and hope no one around me does anything interesting like smile or take a drink of coffee or heaven forbid there are any squirrels outside the window. I remind myself to turn my chair away from the window. I put my hands of the keyboard and pray. I dont pray anymore for the perfect words. I pray for patience and compassion. I pray that my heart is open to whatever happens. I pray and smile and dont judge any of my creativity inspired ocd-ness. And then after one large green tea latte, a bag of much deserved almonds, 2 glasses of water, 5 bathroom breaks, watching interesting people coming and going and sipping their of coffee, of trying not to notice the squirrel I swear is smiling at me outside the windrow, of thinking at least 17 times that maybe I should buy a cupcake because maybe I would be more creative on red velvet, I find that I have been lost in my made up world of Sugar and Franklin and Louise. Of the mountains where my mother grew up that I havent played in since I was a child. My world made up of old realities and dreams that you dream when you allow yourself to fling open doors that have been shut for just long enough. This is my flow for now. I wiggle and squirm, sometimes dread and sometimes cry because I cant wait to get there. But I get there. Because it wakes me up in the middle of the night when I dont asking me where Ive been. I get there because writing is the only thing Ive ever done that I can quit a thousand times and 5 minutes later peel myself off the floor and out of my tantrum and start doing it again. I do it because after he died I heard him say... write it down, Shelly. Even if its one word, write it down. So today, I got out of bed, the one without him in it and I did.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 12:18:08 +0000
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