Riving My Time

Last week I started a story and this week I am finishing it up.  Sometime in the last year I thought the idea up.  Next year I am hoping to sell it to whomever will buy it.  I have no idea where that will be yet.

I spent the week in between trying to figure it out.  Trying to figure out the emotion that only one of my characters would feel and why she would behave the way she does.  Yet it wasn't until I wrote the situation I had been trying to resolve into the story that I could see it.

On Monday, I had the day off from my day job.  I puttered around the house knowing I should get to work.  Work being two main things.  Writing and reading, reading and writing.  I sat down with an article about a poet by the name of Christian Wiman.  I had never heard of him prior to this article but it's good to expand one's horizons.  It was an interesting (and long) article about him for which I needed a dictionary.  Not for all of it, luckily but for just a few words - some of which I probably should have known but didn't. 

In the midst of reading this article about the author of Every Riven Thing (riven was one of the words I had to look up) I was suddenly struck by something in the article and I immediately put down the magazine and got to my own work.  I worked and worked and took a decent sized break for dinner and then worked again, up until 10 o'clock.  The hours passed without me knowing and my hand grew only the slightest bit tired from hours of writing.  (I'm still trying to figure out how I write best.... longhand or on the computer... kind of believing the longhand works for a first draft and the computer works for adding in the details of a second draft - it's different for everyone.)

Upon reflection of what it was in the article that moved me I had no idea.  I went back to the article in order to finish it during last night's downtime.  This is a time of night that comes an hour or so before I have to go to bed, after my nightly shower, once I have turned the computer off for the night.  When I have to work at 7:30am, the timing is at 9pm.  The computer goes off.  Apparently, as I've heard and read in multiple places, looking at a computer screen anywhere within the hour or so before you go to bed stimulates the brain in a negative way - causing sleep disturbance.  So... I can enjoy some reading during this downtime.  Reading from a - gasp - book or magazine.  In the article there was a quote from the author that I loved.  I believe I'm going to save it for the right occasion.  This quote was enough to get me past my very temporary and not too stressful (though still irritating) writer's block.  This was the quote that caused me to stir when I needed stirring.  Funny part is not having remembered it at all until I re-read it.

I'm still working on figuring out my rhythm.  The one that works best to bring the words out of me from within.  I wish I could just not worry about my job at all (maybe just some schooling) so I could REALLY figure it out but I'll have to deal with what's here and now, not what will be.  One day I'll be able to worry about finding my rhythm day in and day out as a full time writer (positive thinking) but for now - I have to stick with after work and on days off.