Blog, Blog, Blog

Timed Writing - No direction

I plan to give myself prompts as I become more comfortable with timed off-the-cuff writing. For now, as I practice opening the flood gates (not easy!) I'll use the advice in my latest book purchase (Writing Down the Bones, Freeing the Writer Within -- publication info in the previous entry):

Sit down right now. Give me this moment. Write whatever's running through you. You might start with "this moment" and end up writing about the gardenia you wore at your wedding seven years ago. That's fine. Don't try to control it. Stay present with whatever comes up, and keep your hand moving.

(11:11 am)

My desk isn’t tidy, though it is neater than some days. There’s only one dirty coffee cup on it, and a screwdriver I didn’t put there. All my tools are scattered around, the rolodex with all my item numbers store in alphabetical order – my nod to organization I wish I had in every aspect of my life. The numbers sit on lined paper, neatly handwritten, sometimes mocking me. The phone isn’t in its cradle – Christian would scold me. That’s why I leave it unhung, maybe. There is an order to my disorder, one that I can live with even though I wish I were more…neat.

My desk is bare of what is truly important, that’s my imagination. Or what sparks my imagination. I picture a workspace with lots of color, color inspires me. I want a large wall behind the computer screen dripping with images and papers, colors and ideas like a bottle that’s held many different colored candles, all burned down and dripped over each other’s wax, creating a new surface – landscape -- each time. I want a larger space where my books and references don’t crowd me, where I don’t have to push the clutter away from me every time I want to work. But what would happen if I had more space? Would I just fill it up, like I do when I buy a new, larger handbag? That’s the way it is with me. I empty one thing, de-clutter and throw away the garbage I can part with and stow what I can’t in another place to be forgotten. Then, filled with a new lease on life, I admire my organized, clean space before the mindless task of going through life’s tomorrows filling back up the space with clutter and garbage I can’t part with. This is what I’d like to embrace rather than parent myself into order. I’d like to embrace my cluttered existence and bask in the idea pool that is my surroundings. I look to my left for example and I see the agenda/address book I had in France. It is plastic, royal blue, red and green with garish yellow stitching. I last used it when Cody was a baby. Why is it sitting on the corner of my desk in 2009? I don’t know. But there it is, and if I were to reach over and touch it, hold it to my nose and smell it, flip through the pages and read it, I would have fodder for fiction. There are people in there I don’t keep in touch with, but whose stories are still in my head. There is a notepad in there, if I remember correctly, with notations I made in waiting rooms and at the park with the baby. What stories lie in there!

(11:22 am)