taking a siesta

I've been using all my brain cells for the fiction I've been writing. Now's the time to sit down and write here. It's an off day for me today. I have no scheduled writing program for myself.
I'm starting to learn the habits of writing. It's funny how hard it is for me to do the things I most desire. But that's how it is. I'll easily give up my writing time and process by saying I'll go to lunch with a friend, or I'll go and do a chore- get clothes or food. I haven't yet figured how to balance all this out. With a normal job, you'd say, I have stay here, I can't go out and spend a few hours in the middle of the day with a friend. No, you work. And you wouldn't say…hmmm…we really need milk and this and that and I'll just go out and do this and then come back and do my job. Nah-uh. Because no matter how many times I promise myself that I'll get back to my writing after I do all these things, I can't. I mean, I can but it's like dragging ten dead oxen to their burial ground ten miles away in the burning heat (like that metaphor, huh?). Writing is hard enough. Why add ten dead oxen in the burning heat that you have to drag single handedly? Right. So.
This is my process without the oxen. I get up (the earlier is always better) and I go downstairs, get myself some breakfast and proceed to read something. I always have novels and biographies and somebody's letters going on so I read one of those. Then I take my shower, dressed, etc. So okay, I've eaten, I've read, I've cleaned myself. Sometimes, after I clean myself, I have to clean my house just a little! So I sweep or vacuum or wash the dishes. Then I leave. I take my keys, shut the door behind me and go out on my walk. Sometimes, I just meander through the neighborhood. And it's a pretty nice neighborhood. It's old and well cared for and I haven't even walked to the end of it. Everyone has flowers out and lawns trimmed and trees trimmed. The neighborhood is old enough (before 1900) that every house is different. Different architectual styles, different renovations, different landscapes. So I meander all through this. I meander past the fascinating houses that tell all sorts of curious possibilies about their owners and I go past the ship-shape ones and the ones where people live so intensely in them that there's barely time to do yard work.
And that's where my mind chatters to itself. I try to get myself to think about what I'll write next but lately I've stopped doing that and just let my mind think about whatever it needs to. I just tell my sub-conscious to simmer on things. “You, think about what to write next about so-and-so,” I tell it. And since it's my sub-conscious, I don't get a response. But it's there because everyone has one, simmering on whatever…sub-consciouses simmer on. I walk for about an hour, or I go down to Fabyan park, next to the Fox River, take some knitting and take a walk that ends up on me sitting at the base of a very large sculpture. Sculpture? It's some conconction of Fayban's. He lived around the turn of the century and was a whacky millionaire. He left scatterings of sculpture all through his property and the one I sit on is one of the few that still stands. It's a tall pillar with an eagle on top. Very ugly, very huh? But it makes a perfect seat. And I sit on that and it sits on an island. So I look out at the river and knit and people jog and bicycle past. There are moments that I spazz out thinking, “OH MY GOD, I NEED TO RUN/BICYCLE/JOG/WORKOUT TOO!” but that simmers down and I just think about my characters in the shade and knit row after row.
Then it's home and time to write (minus the ten dead oxen).
Obviously, this process takes time but it's really the process that works. If I don't take a walk before I work, I find myself getting all twitchy in the middle, with the attention span of a gnat. So I just gotta walk. And if I don't eat before I do anything else, I get to feeling pretty strange and dizzy (don't worry kids, I know why I get dizzy if I don't eat) so I just gotta eat. as for the reading…well, it's a way to get a jump start about all sorts of interesting thoughts!
So there you have it. Catherine's writing process. A day of. It's so damn easy to split the process up and to go and do other things. And that happens more than I would like it to. But I'm getting to know what works, what doesn't. And the morning really does work. The morning is a fabulous free time and I'm growing to love it more and more. The panic I used to wake up with every morning is receeding and I'm finding if I get up in the morning and go to bed at night, then I don't need naps. Novel, right? Hah. It's sad to give up the night-life but I do so love the mornings.

It's been good to chronicle this. Thanks for reading.