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You always know when the book is going badly. One, I listen to nonstandard music. Today, I tried THE SECRET GARDEN. But no music helped me be able to settle down to work. I knew it was bad when I made three separate trips over to the main part of the house for various things. The last trip I changed shirts. Why? Because I find sometimes if my anxiety is too high, or my muse too hard to find, that doing something ordinary can help break up the nonproductive thought processes. Brush your teeth, change clothes, something simple and automatic. There are days when I end up with more make-up because I’m doing something, anything to stop the cycle of negative thoughts. Agatha Christie liked to do the dishes. I know another writer that claims cleaning the kitchen floor is restful. Something to distract and be very un-writer-like for a few minutes seems to refresh the mind better than just forcing yourself to keep banging your head against the computer.
Though, do bear in mind, that if you start finding excuses to refresh yourself every day instead of pounding out pages, that’s called procrastination, and you must nip that in bud. But a little break can be just what the doctor ordered.
I had to drop back and loose more pages, but I finally think we’ve got the right direction. Here’s hoping that my internal compass doesn’t go all whack-job on me again this book. We’re in the home stretch, but I’m beginning to feel like a baseball player that has been stuck on third for most of an inning. You can see home plate, but no one is hitting the ball far enough for you to be able to make that last run. I need one good hit, then I think we can bring our runners in, and be home free. Of course, it’s never a good sign when I start resorting to sport’s metaphors. No, never a good sign that.