After three weeks spent sleeping (badly) in the living room, celebrating the holidays, and having R home with the various distractions he provides, I am back in my room, with my own office space. It’s such a relief. It’s hard to be set up for life, work, and sleep in what is essentially a traffic area. The living room where I was settled is adjacent to the kitchen, so every late night cup of tea or early morning cup of coffee was a conversational opportunity for me. Conversational opportunity being the tactful way to say interruption, of course. It’s left me seriously off my stride.
But I’m out of excuses now. It’s time to get back into it or at least into something. “It” would be A Gift of Grace. The “something” could be any of the myriad of other projects I’ve started and left half finished over the course of the past couple years. Or even something new. It doesn’t matter to me what I write as long as I start working again.
I just spent ten minutes alternately pondering the word, “working,” and thinking about chocolate. This is not a productive use of my time. Maybe I should go redesign a website instead? Or, I suppose, work on my taxes. Finalize some insurance paperwork? Lots of options, but apparently even writing a basic blog post is beyond my writing ability at the moment.
It never ceases to amaze me how people who aren’t writers somehow feel that writing is not work. That a writer at work is simply goofing off at the computer, and that whatever they are doing can and should be set aside if a family member wants something Right Now. It can be SO hard to get back into the groove.
I think the hardest thing to explain is that when I’m in my story world, I’m really not present in the real world. I’ve warned people about it, but if my brain is mostly in my story, you could tell me the house was on fire and I’d nod and go back to typing. But that place — that state of flow — is so hard to get to, and when I’m not there, even a tiny interruption brings me back to reality.
Not sure I’ve ever truly been that into the flow while writing. Definitely there when reading, though.
It’s what I write for. I love that feeling of pure focus and writing is, for me, the best place to get it. Like a runner’s high, I suspect. But it’s hard to get to! I’ve probably written every day for months without reaching it and then something happens like the first draft of A Lonely Magic where I hit it day after day for a while. So much fun!