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Four pages again today, and it was a hard won four pages. If you read this blog regularly you know that sometimes when the muse is with me I can do twenty pages in four to five hours. Today it took nearly four hours to do four pages. Man.
I know that the threads of the plot are coming together and deciding which way the climax will run. So, I’m having to sort of tip-toe through all the minefields, or should I say, decide which doors to open and which to leave shut. No, it feels like minefields.
I’ll tell you how slow it’s been; I tried Christmas music. Even that didn’t help. I’ve tried everything from Evanescence, to Destiny’s child, to Handel and Bach, and finally to a selection of nature recordings. I typed my best to birds singing in the woods. That’s usually a soundtrack for a Merry book, but not today. Today I just couldn’t find any music that worked. The specific recording I used today: backyard birds by the Wild Bird Center of St. Louis, Missouri.
I hope by tomorrow I will be back to my usual music. If not I may have to hit the music store and try to find something new. I hate that, but sometimes the right music is absolutely essential for me. Other writers need absolute silence to write. Every one’s different, it’s part of what makes the whole process so terribly interesting, and so terribly frustrating. One of the reasons that you can’t truly teach another person how to be an artist of any kind is that art is like love; what works for one person is a complete disaster for another.
Maybe I’ll hit the music store today, so that I’ll have a supply of new music just in case the muse and I are still this confused tomorrow.
Also, today is Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s Bithday. So happy Lovecraft’s Birthday.