It’s been one of those days. You know the kind: you get a bit of time to work, feeling super motivated to get cracking at that word count and make some progress, but when your hands hit the keyboard it’s just…WUMP. Brick wall.
The muses just do. not. show. up. The words don’t flow. You’re sticking with it, pushing through, but each sentence feels like catching worms: they’re slippery, stretchy, and stubborn as heck. Heaven forbid you lose your train of thought, because VOOP it’s wriggled right back into the dirt, never to be seen again.
Maybe my muses are all out buying milk and bread for tonight’s snowstorm?
At any rate, I excised seven hundred words of bluh, which is okay. It’s more the way a day like this makes you feel, you know? Just doubtful, and frustrated, unfulfilled and irritated. I know I’m lucky in that I don’t get a lot of days like this, and that some very successful authors feel like this almost 100% of the time (woof–good on them for fighting the good fight), but man I hate days like this. It feels like wasted time, which is probably only amplified by the fact that I have so little time to write these days that I’m acutely aware of how I need to maximize what I do get. I’m a bit curious to know if getting (and reading) my first two copies of Locus Magazine had anything to do with it. I’ve been doing so much better not measuring my own progress against other writers, but maybe I slipped back into some bad habits that helped derail me a bit today. I know I had to beat back some negative self-talk last night, but I felt I nipped that in the bud pretty well. Hmmm, maybe not quite as completely as I’d hoped?
It could also be that yesterday was a great writing day. The words really worked, I was pleased with the scene I was tackling, and left the keyboard satisfied. That evening I was absolutely bursting with ideas for several short stories, and this morning I was attempting to work on one of them, while keeping all the recent writing lessons I’ve taken in mind, which is almost always a recipe for crashing out for me. Too many mental hamsters to juggle while steering the train, you know? As Tim Gunn would say, it all comes out a bit tortured.
But I know that it’s quite common (predictably) for me to have a bad writing day after a particularly good one, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised.
Anyway, tomorrow is another day. At least I kept the gears turning (even if they were squealing and grinding, and maybe I left the parking brake on?) and maintained the habit of writing a little something everyday. For now, while Goldbug naps on my chest, I’ll just soak up some Great British Baking Show and later we’re getting sandwiches from Monument Square Market for dinner. So I can relax for a bit and hopefully start again fresh tomorrow. :)
Maggie Slater 