I haven’t written one word – save for blog posts, FB and Twitter updates, and the occasional short email – in three weeks.
Writer’s block, you ask?
Not exactly.
More like Writer’s Sludge.
I’m editing. I’m actually in the easy stage of editing, where all the major changes have been made and the end is in sight. I should be able to tackle this no problem, right?
Unfortunately, editing is also the tricky stage, when I need to focus all my attention on the task before me. Which means I can’t do it during the day, when the kids need me. Even putting on a movie doesn’t help (yes, I do resort to that sometimes – I never claimed to be Supermom), because I’m still in “mom” mode, not “writer” mode.
Up until the plague sweeping our house, I had been getting to the library for an hour on Fridays after Carl got home, and even that one hour of writing a week was fantastic. But with at least one of us being sick for almost the entire month of February, that just stopped happening.
Editing in the evenings, after the kids are in bed, you suggest? Yes. I should do that. I often have grand plans throughout the day of doing that. But usually by the time 8:00 rolls around and the kids are asleep, all I can do is curl up in the recliner and read fluffy books. My plans of a winter spent delving into different mythologies has fallen through, too! I’ve fallen back on comfort reads, Agatha Christie and Patricia C Wrede and Miss Read. All good books, but none of which require me to stretch my brain.
Which means, of course, that even now that we’re all (rap wood) healthy again, and I could be working on the MS again, my creative muscles have fallen out of use, and my natural laziness is creeping back to the forefront of my personality, instead of locked tightly in the back, where I usually try to keep it contained.
So I write this blog post in hopes that by being honest and open about this, it will trigger something in me, maybe even that famous stubbornness and contrariness that I’m known for throughout my family and friends, and I’ll start writing again immediately after posting this.
Even though I haven’t been writing/editing, I have started exercising some of my creative muscles again recently. See?
I would count editing as writing. Sure, you're not drafting something new, but it's still important.
I agree, editing is still writing – but I'm not even getting that done these days. Just staring at the words on my screen and hoping eventually something will occur to me to do with them. Sigh. It'll come back eventually.
I hear you. I find good editing much harder to do than good writing. (I know many would say they are one and the same, but I experience them differently.) As for doing anything that involves much brain power after 8 p.m.? Not going to happen. I'm right there with you on the curling up with a good book.
I'm going through James Herriot's books again these last few nights. Talk about comfort reads!
This sounds like how I live ALL THE TIME. And my kids have WAYYY too much screentime. Like, I feel like I've accomplished something amazing when the TV is off. Expressing creativity in other mediums (I've been doing a lot of Lego recently myself) is still expressing creativity, and it still works the proper figurative muscles, so it could be helping you indirectly the whole time!
Except I had to put them all away because Grace kept dropping the swords down the Register of No Return. Which is better then when I was a kid and kept dropping them down the Floorboard Cracks of No Return …