![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
musings on work
Feb. 7th, 2007 01:35 pmThe writing was going pretty there for a few weeks, and now it's not. This could be a temporary glitch, as I've been a little distracted by life stuff, or it could be just one of those walls that I sometimes hit. Looking back at my outline (it still feels weird to even have one of those, but I admit it's handy), I've finished drafting Act 3. Some of Act 4 already exists, having been drafted over a year ago. The rest is a big blank, and I've got none of Act 5, and am not even sure exactly what will happen in Act 5. I know my heroine will die, but keep changing my mind as to how. And I know vaguely about other stuff that will happen in the last couple years of her life, but don't know how it all fits together.
Having just written that out, it seems fairly evident where I need to go next with the work, but I'm feeling uninspired today. Or else just lazy. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between uninspired and lazy. Just like, when I feel stuck, it can be hard to tell the difference between times when I need to stay in my chair and muscle my way through the stuck-ness, or times when I need to put the work down and go do something else for a while. And am I stuck because something's wrong with the work, or because something's wrong with me? Always, always, I wonder if the problem is just that I'm not trying hard enough.
Which all sounds angsty, and I'm not feeling angsty these days, just contemplating the rhythms of the work. How sometimes it rolls right along with hardly any effort, and I can't say why, while other times it stops dead, and I can't say why. I'm reminded of a Jane Siberry quote: "It's not art, it's a power struggle. It captures me, I capture it back." I'm not fond of the combat metaphor, but I can see how she got there.
The last couple weeks, while things were rolling right along, it felt almost like I had outsourced the writing to some lesser part of my brain that would clock in, generate a thousand words a day, and clock out, with no more emotion or mental investment than a factory worker. Like the higher part of my brain, the part that has the big ideas, had drawn out this very vague sketch and told the factory worker to just put together some rough material that more or less fits that sketch, and then wandered away. It would check in from time to time to see how the work was going, add the occasional smaller idea or new detail, and then leave again. It's like division of labor inside my own brain, and this actually makes sense to me. What I need right now is to get the story on paper; it doesn't matter how rough it is, because I'm going to shape and craft it later, and I know there will be some good stuff in the material I've been generating, even while there's also a lot of dross.
Today, however, it feels like the idea-having part of my brain is tied up in meetings, and the factory worker has gone out for a cigarette break that won't end.
It's very possible I'll spend my afternoon researching pop-star touring schedules, and the history of the Billboard Hot 100 list, and other random stuff like that. Because if the factory worker and the idea-haver aren't going to do anything, maybe I can get the research assistant to contribute something.
Having just written that out, it seems fairly evident where I need to go next with the work, but I'm feeling uninspired today. Or else just lazy. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between uninspired and lazy. Just like, when I feel stuck, it can be hard to tell the difference between times when I need to stay in my chair and muscle my way through the stuck-ness, or times when I need to put the work down and go do something else for a while. And am I stuck because something's wrong with the work, or because something's wrong with me? Always, always, I wonder if the problem is just that I'm not trying hard enough.
Which all sounds angsty, and I'm not feeling angsty these days, just contemplating the rhythms of the work. How sometimes it rolls right along with hardly any effort, and I can't say why, while other times it stops dead, and I can't say why. I'm reminded of a Jane Siberry quote: "It's not art, it's a power struggle. It captures me, I capture it back." I'm not fond of the combat metaphor, but I can see how she got there.
The last couple weeks, while things were rolling right along, it felt almost like I had outsourced the writing to some lesser part of my brain that would clock in, generate a thousand words a day, and clock out, with no more emotion or mental investment than a factory worker. Like the higher part of my brain, the part that has the big ideas, had drawn out this very vague sketch and told the factory worker to just put together some rough material that more or less fits that sketch, and then wandered away. It would check in from time to time to see how the work was going, add the occasional smaller idea or new detail, and then leave again. It's like division of labor inside my own brain, and this actually makes sense to me. What I need right now is to get the story on paper; it doesn't matter how rough it is, because I'm going to shape and craft it later, and I know there will be some good stuff in the material I've been generating, even while there's also a lot of dross.
Today, however, it feels like the idea-having part of my brain is tied up in meetings, and the factory worker has gone out for a cigarette break that won't end.
It's very possible I'll spend my afternoon researching pop-star touring schedules, and the history of the Billboard Hot 100 list, and other random stuff like that. Because if the factory worker and the idea-haver aren't going to do anything, maybe I can get the research assistant to contribute something.
