the writer at rest?

Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside, so you can stab them during the night before they get away. -- Earl Nightingale

Oooh, and the book is back.

I wish I could figure out the moods that capture and sway this writing life. For most of May, my poor writing life was right down the drains, lost in the mists surrounding a thousand activities, a thousand emotions, everything urgent or dear. And when I'd have a spare moment, I'd squint at my characters and see strangers instead.

Not a pleasant feeling.

But somehow, the book is creeping up on me again.

I don't know what the trick was: what made the difference? The dogged and difficult Monday I spent all-but-shackled to my computer, clawing my way toward this story? The nights I spent staring at my ceiling wondering about what this next bit of drafting might hold?

Whatever it was, we are now back in full swing, and I feel the unfolding joy of work again. I am so cranky when the work isn't going well... you really don't want to be near me.

Though, come to think of it, perhaps it's not easy to be around me when writing goes well, either? I zone out during conversations, because a character is tugging on my ear. I forget to do things.

And at night I crowd my bed with books to read, and fall asleep on pens... Once I woke up certain I'd broken a rib somehow... nope. Just a ballpoint pen digging into me through the night. And that's if I fall asleep...

When work is good, I'm thinking about the book instead of trying to sleep. I keep snatching at the scraps of paper I have beside the bed, scribbling in the dark. Those are a joy to decipher the next morning--what was I writing in, Sanskrit? One of these days, I'll scrawl some fantastic line on my sheets and never be able to read it again...

But that's me these mornings, stumbling out to breakfast dazed, inkstained, and full of words.