Gearing up for Another Writing Day

Hmm. I hope that subtitle is not wasted on this Hub... I may have to use it elsewhere. Morning in the chaotic King household wields its weapons of mass distraction - children winding back up from a sleepover; breakfast breaking my early concentration; Saturday chores screaming obscenities at my efforts to garner 5000 words by late afternoon (which gets me back on target on my nanowrimo book).

Some writers work best with 'to do' lists. Some work best off the cuff. Some just work. The sum of my writing day relies far too heavily on perseverance at times. I like to make 'to do' lists. As I check off each item, I am moved silently forward like some invisible gargantuan hand lifts my writing and transports it far beyond where I would normally end up.

Ok, so I may still be wandering through some sleep deprived dream state. The fact remains, I love working off 'to do' lists, but I loathe creating them. Go figure.

I also love working off the cuff. I feel fresher and more honest in my writing that way. Yet focus and direction can suffer. When this happens, I end up loathing what I write.

Writers comprise a curious lot. We chase our own tails, run aimlessly after thoughts we seldom lasso and we stare out windows in serene contemplation of where we'd rather be writing.

Back to the subtitle. When words collide. Isn't this malady worse than writer's block? Writer's block does not exist. You can always write through the block. When your words collide everything you attempt to do as an author crumbles.

Your verb tenses don't agree and your nouns flop like a wrinkled balloon behind the couch on a dust ridden floor. To boot, your verbs lack any zing falling back into the staid rank and file of 'to be'. Only Shakespeare could make anything worthwhile of 'to be'.

Adverbs litter your literary landscape, phantom paper castaways clinging to any paragraph they can claim, then proliferating until they dominate the entire piece of writing. Adjectives, not to be outdone, weaken what few concrete nouns you have until you step back and desperately quell the urge to spew.

Then, in a moment of weakness (?), panic (?), we dive into waxing poetic rather than waxing the surfboard calling from the garage. Maybe we should listen to that call. Maybe we should pack it all in and sail to the beach in our land yacht, attempting to hold our coffee and the steering wheel and the surfboard simultaneously while irritated sailors whisk by our leisurely pace.

No, we must persevere. We look at the word - persevere - and realize what instills such hatred within us toward the word. Generally as writers, we love words. The word 'persevere' says it all. Severe is the dominant root from a surface perspective. Every instance of perseverance we endure, severity overwhelms the situation.

This feels like a measurement. I get twenty miles per gallon. I get 1000 words per severe. "Severe what?" some may inquire, and an excellent question they pose. Try severe anguish - over words that refuse to do as you direct. Try severe angst over the words you work and mold and morph into a product you crave accolades over. Try severe fear - that your words will never decorate your home with food on the table or power in your electric lines.

The word 'persevere' collided like a cue ball on the eight with the totally disassociated word perpendicular. See how harmless THAT word stands? I get 1000 words per pendicular. Harmless, almost even soothing to the mind. I would much rather perpendicular through my writing than persevere. Alas, such nonsense can never exist (except in tongue-in-keyboard writing, eh?).

So my words collide, stir up an awful electron wreck of parts of speech and random thoughts and my Saturday morning write transcends into Alice in Blithering Babble Land without the Alice and without the power of the alluded classic. The only thing left to such a writer? Claim genius at the clever use of twisted cliches and hopefully clever puns.

Then the challenge arises - Can you get 'over the top'? Can you go where no keystroke has gone before? Juices begin to flow like a sea of Florida OJ through a Tropicana pipeline. The vein struck cries out to be mined like a backwoods West Virginia mountain. Pillage the language! Wring it for all its precious gold. Find that special phrase that sends the reader into outer awareness of inner delight.

Make the readers smile despite themselves. Throw caution to the recycle bin and hit the delete key. Dance the electron-produced blackness on their white screens to twist like an elephant attempting to scratch its ass with a front foot. Establish the visual in the reader's mind of the huge beast crashing to the African turf just as you realize your own itch which you cannot reach yourself.

Then sit back and sigh. Your writing day thus begins. God I hope it gets better than this...