Motivation Hard to Come By

As the title says, I've been very unmotivated recently, at least on my creative side. I've been somewhat more motivated on my mundane side. Family coming in for Thanksgiving in just a little more than three weeks is a motivating factor. So I repaired the oven that's been on the semi-fritz for two years. I bought, assembled, and put in place a TV stand to replace the redneck set-up we had of a not-working console TV serving as the stand for a smaller one.

I took out the dying and finally dead microwave, a built-in one, and temporarily installed an old one that had been stored in the basement while we look for something new to go in there. Did some carpet cleaning on Saturday, and table clearing-of-clutter. Slowly things taken out during the last eleven months are being put back. We still have many toys to sort through, and boxes of new purchases or of things pulled out of places because they needed to be in different places, but at this point it's all very manageable. So many household mundane tasks remain, but by November 25 the house should be in good shape.

Then there's finances. A large car repair expense last month, my needing tires for the pickup this month, another large purchase last month, and yet one more large expense due next month means I need to know our financial status before going much farther. I wasn't really motivated to do this, but have no choice. Saturday and last night I worked on it. I'm now within an hour of having everything entered in the checkbook and transferred to my budget spreadsheet. I'll finish that tonight. At that point boring but necessary financial catch-up tasks will be behind me, leaving only the need to maintain tracking expenses.

So, by tomorrow night, Wednesday, I should be able to let my brain function move toward its creative side, and write. I have my four projects to work on. One is editing, so that really leaves only three projects. Well, plus this blog and my other blog.

Inspiration for blog posts has been particularly difficult to come by. I'd love to blog three times a week at each blog, but would settle for a little less. To keep that up I should have a list of topics laid out, a couple of weeks ahead. I do have a couple of things in mind for this blog, but none for the other.

Plenty of creative work is ahead of me. Hopefully my mind will properly focus on that, and great works will result. Hopefully.

Metaphors of Life

In trying to figure out how to maintain two blogs, maybe start a monthly newsletter to market my writing, get back to writing an occasional article for two content sites, final editing my first novel prior to e-self-publishing, working on a current non-fiction project, and soon getting back to editing my second novel, I'm considering a theme for this blog.

Taking off from Wesley's "arrow through the air" metaphor, I'm thinking of making this blog a "metaphors of life" site. To do that most of the posts would have to take a situation I encounter, or maybe create, and turn it into a metaphor for some aspect of life.

It sounds like a good idea. The problem is I struggle with metaphors. That's strange for someone who fancies himself a poet, isn't it? I have to struggle to find those situations from which to build metaphors. Consequently the vast majority of my poems are weaker than they could be. My best poems incorporate metaphor and simile.

Well, it's a goal and direction, and I'm considering it. Stay tuned. I won't give up things such as book reviews, but will be trying to incorporate much more on metaphor.

Well, not quite normal yet

In my last post I reported that I was back to normal after the food poisoning the week of March 16th. I was wrong, though: I'm not really back to normal. Oh, physically I am, I guess. But mentally I'm not. All the good I was doing on weight loss is in danger of being reversed, as since the sickness I have no desire to eat right. The three days out of town, on conference fare, didn't help. But at home I just haven't felt like doing what I need to do to have the right kinds of foods for lunch or supper. Consequently, when I weighed in today, I was way, way up. I'm still a good amount ahead from where I started, but if I don't get back at it today.... It probably hasn't helped that Lynda is still away. No accountability partner.

This weekend I could not focus very well. I started Saturday with a couple of household things. We added a console TV to the living room, which hides the lower shelves of a corner cabinet. This cabinet (not a built-in) needed to be raised anyway, since it is 18 inches shorter than the built-ins on the other end of the wall. So Saturday morning, using some salvaged 2x6 boards, I "built" an 18 inch riser for it and installed it. Then I reloaded all the shelves with the nicknacks that had unceremoniously cluttered the hearth for a month. The console TV hides the riser very nicely. Oh, I also raised the console TV the thickness of two 2x6s, as it was a bit close to the floor for comfortable viewing. This all consumed the morning, much of the time working with the salvaged wood to back out nails and separate pieces prior to sawing.

After that, though, I had a very hard time tackling my next project: income taxes. I made a good start, but my concentration faded. As it was snowing outside, I didn't particularly want to walk as a means of clearing my head. So I puttered on the taxes, got a little done, surfed the web, played mindless computer games, and watch a little NCAA basketball.

I also read in my recent book purchases (the Tolkien letters, the C.S. Lewis letters, and misc. C.S.L. writings), in the Mark Twain Hawaii letters, and in a writers mag. Even with those, I found my mind wandering, and I went from item to item with little comprehension. I gave that up and, as the snow had stopped, drove to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things urgently needed (peanut butter among them), then did laundry and dishes. That got me through 6:00 PM, and a PB&J sandwich through 6:30 PM. I tried the taxes again, and made a little more progress.

Saturday evening was better as far as concentration was concerned. I worked on my outline for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, and outlined the next seven chapters. That will get me about half way through the book. I was able to read with greater comprehension after that.

Sunday, at a church dinner, I thought my sickness was coming back. Fortunately, it was only one episode and I seem to be fine physically. Still, that gave me a too-easy excuse not to walk or exercise. The taxes again resisted the five hour concentrated effort needed to complete them. I outlined the rest of a political essay I started, then went back to my reading. I found some of C.S. Lewis' letters on his spiritual life quite interesting, Tolkien's letters to his son during WW2 less so.

So what will this week hold? I need to get back on the stick as far as exercise and diet are concerned, and get back in the form I was in two weeks ago. I need to have that concentrated time to complete our taxes. It looks as if we will get a nice refund, and I need to get that in the works. And I need to get back to writing, so that if I do get to go to a conference in May (hopefully the Blue Ridge one again), at least I'll have something to present to editors/agents.

Tonight I get my wife back. Yeah!

A Productive Evening

My wife is gone again, with our daughter and son-in-law in the big OKC, tending to our grandchild. When she's gone, I try to maintain our normal routines. I found out I sleep much better that way. So last night, I fixed and ate supper first thing, but instead of then going into the living room to read (as we normally do), I went straight to the computer in the "Dungeon", as we call our computer room, intending to do some personal business stuff. I found out I couldn't do the task due to lack of the necessary papers, wasted a bit of time on computer games, and headed back upstairs to read. Twenty pages later in Dune, and I was ready to the Dungeon again.

The project: make some more progress on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I had hoped to have the proposal ready to send last Thursday, so I'm obviously behind on my intentions. The actual proposal document is done, subject to tweaking and expansion of the competition section. What I lacked was about five pages of text. I'm supposed to have the first thirty with the proposal, and I only had twenty-five.

Even though I have outlined the book, so that I know the major events that must take place to put my main character into the cross-fire at the World Series (more on that someday, perhaps), I have not outlined it to the point where I know each scene. Those are coming as I get the inspiration, still switching gears from non-fiction to fiction. I have two scenes out of sequence, later in the book, mostly finished, but I needed that next chapter, that next scene, to have the full thirty pages to send. Plus editing, of course.

Last night I couldn't seem to concentrate on the task at hand. I got some other things done, such as filing, organization, reading writing blogs, re-read the last chapter in sequence and did a few edits. But what to do with that elusive scene wouldn't materialize. Should I switch to one of the Mafia Dons, and have them going through the routines of business? Should I do a scene at the farm in Kansas, how the family was reacting to Ronnie's success? Or should I do another baseball scene? None of these seemed right at that point in the story. I thought of scenes later in the book I could work on, but that wouldn't get me where I needed to be as soon as possible. Was this my first case of writer's block? Computer games became a diversion.

Then, about 10 PM, the perfect next scene hit me. I've been intending to have Ronnie, the main character, interact with a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, a man I'd introduced briefly in the second chapter. Why not have their first one-on-one interview now. I was immediately taken to the Tribune newsroom, to the sports desk, where John Lind was trying to figure out how to interview the farm boy cum pitching sensation, and pounding keys.

At midnight, I had an almost finished Chapter 6, and was up to thirty-one or thirty-two pages at the start of the book. That put me way, way out of routine, for I don't normally go to bed that late. When I went upstairs and to bed, my mind was full of plot and dialog, and no way could I sleep. Twenty minutes later I got up and went to my reading chair. I couldn't face another chapter of Dune, so I wrote some in my journal, then picked up my Bible and read in Numbers, deciding on the next two possible lessons in my desert wandering Bible study. The words on the printed page were big and bold, the way they always are when my mind is sharpest. How could this be, a sharp mind at 1:30 in the morning? Nevertheless, I had a great time until tiredness came over me in waves about 2:00 AM.

I used to think my most creative time was between 10 PM and 2 AM. Years ago this manifested itself in solving all kinds of engineering problems I took home with me. Then the routines of life crept in, and I no longer worked on creative things at those hours. Is a change coming? Stay tuned.