Empty House
The house is quiet these days.
Steph is gone on yet another business trip. This time it’s a full week in New York, followed by 36 hours at home, then another full week in New York. To make things more interesting (hurrah), I have to work the weekend that she’s home so our chances of actually seeing one another are pretty slim.
Then there’s Tucker’s absence. His paws and untrimmed nails no longer click against the wood floor and he’s no longer scratching to be let out at 3am which means you get a full night of sleep. A nice thing until you realize why. Still, time is healing all wounds and each day gets better.
it’s still too damn quiet and when it’s quiet, you spend time with your thoughts and that never goes anywhere good. Fortunately, in her infinite wisdom, Steph thought ahead and arranged a ‘dinner date’ for me with some of our friends. I headed over to their place last night, had a nice meal, and a couple of hours of human conversation outside of work. Helped quite a bit.
Empty Quill
On the writing front, there’s still no writing front.
I’ve put Carrionhove on hold as I’ve lost the story. Usually when that happens, that means there’s a character problem or a plot problem or something else in there that isn’t quite right.
The events of the past week haven’t helped much but one hope of the new job was that I’d be in a position that was less stressful and allowed for a free mind at night. For a bit, it was heading that way. Then, as one might put it, things went to hell in a handbasket and I find myself dragged back into the position I was previously. Even if it’s only temporary, it’s highly depressing.
Then again, perhaps so is writer’s block.
Sometimes crippling writer’s block is actually just depression, and it’s a thing you have to deal with in whatever positive way you can.
— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) March 29, 2013
Reading that tweet (and the blog post linked below) got me thinking. Every time I sit down at the computer, I suddenly feel as if I must write a friggin’ masterpiece. Every word has to be right, every phrase and scene and so forth. It ends up stopping me and I can’t go anywhere and I get bummed and frustrated and the cycle starts anew.
Of course, I know better. Viable Paradise taught us that ‘It’s a draft, it can suck’ but my brain is ‘Screw that, if it’s not fantastic, go home!’ Some would argue this is proof I shouldn’t listen to my brain.
In a blog post sometime back, Chuck Wendig kind of answered this – “Care Less“. In a nutshell – all you’re trying to do is write words. There isn’t much to it beyond that so anything else is a head game and you gotta figure it out some way or another.
I’m trying new techniques. I’ve got a new story idea, something completely different than what I’ve done in the past, and I’m going to take a stab at it. In addition, I recently bought a copy of Scrivener, a writing software that some authors praise. It might not be for me but the current method of hiding from the blank Microsoft Word document isn’t working so why not?
Moose and Ink 