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Two pages today. Worse and worse. But in fairness, I had two appointments today and wasn’t even able to get to the desk until about two in the afternoon. Unless the book is going great guns I know better than to try and begin so late in the day. But, I’ve been so frustrated that I simply didn’t want to give up without an attempt. So I attempted. I may have figured out the way through this section of the book, or I may get to the desk tomorrow and find that I have to throw out the two pages that I managed to drag out of myself. Damnit.
I listened to some Chopin and it helped. He’s not usually a composer I enjoy, but today it was very soothing. But it’s not soothing I need, it’s inspiration, or at least something to help me get out of my own way. Usually a slow down like this leads to rewrites either now or later. Or sometimes my head just gets ugly, and it’s a wait and see game. Wait and see for my mood to change. Artists, whatever flavor we are, are such moody bastards. I try not to be, but we are a high strung lot, all nerve endings and whims. I’m less whimsical than most, but even I have my moments. I just don’t usually have a moment this late in a book.
The sense that I’m lost in the plot and my characters are waiting for me to lead them out into the light, but I’ve dropped my torch in the dark, and don’t know which way is out.
The world is always dark when a writer has a book bleeding on the table and can’t find where the blood is coming from. You keep searching in the bloody insides, hunting for the source of the problem, but the more you probe, the more normal everything looks. Everything is working fine. Blood pressure normal, heart rate great, everything is peachy, except for that every widening pool of crimson that I can’t seem to plug up. The answer, of course, is that there may be nothing wrong with the book, but my mood. The patient reads just fine, so why do I have this horrible feeling that I’ve missed something vital and, in the end, it will be curtains unless I find the spot I missed.