Last night I grabbed my black spiral bound notebook off my nightstand, sat cross-legged on my bed, and pulled out a pen. My intent was to write some poetry because I wanted to be creative - and because I wanted to ride my new writing motivation while it was still spinning.
I opened a blank page and prepped my right hand.
Pen - ready.
Brain - ready.
Room - not bad. I'm a little cold but it's ok.
Intent - a glimmer of something.
Distractions - uhhhh...
I decided to make a go of it in the usual manner, scribbling whatever came into my head. I'm generally given a moment of inspiration, an idea, a flash that spurs me to sit down to write. Or sometimes it's just a feeling or a desire to get something out. And then I just let my brain meander along.
And when this process is working perfectly, what I write down is pretty good without excessive rewriting. Unless...
Interruptions
I've heard writers (usually fiction writers, you know the "real" writers) say that they don't know what they're going to write before they write it. I've always thought it was a bunch of witchcrafty hogwash to be honest. How can you not know what you're going to write about?
But I do this often when I write my poems and blogs. What comes will come while the pen is moving or the hands are typing. In fact, as of this moment I don't know exactly what I'm going to write next.
But the thing is that this magical process can only happen without interruptions. I've heard other writers say this before too - that if they are writing, they must NOT be interrupted for any reason.
I got this last night.
As I sat there trying to spit words through ink, I kept hearing the creak of the living room sofa. The sound it makes when my husband is about to get up and move about the room.
(Yes, we have a creaky sofa. One day when I'm independently wealthy we will have a non-creaky sofa.)
That river of creativity that normally runs from my brain and through my fingertips kept hitting little dams. Dams in the form of, "is he getting up?" and "is he going to come in here?"
Now I love my husband. I adore him. He's the single greatest blessing I have in this life and without him I probably would have jumped off a bridge. Twice.
But when I kept hearing that creaking noise over and over again, the spell in my body kept breaking. My pen kept stopping. I'd stare at the page without feeling, the flow shut off. I'd try to hit a reset button but I couldn't find one.
Suddenly there was a dam every five seconds.
"Is he coming in here?" "I think he's coming in here." "What's that noise?" "Is he getting up or sitting down?" "Maybe he's going to the kitchen to get some popcorn" And on and on and on.
Eventually he did walk by...on his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth. And at that point I felt like he'd walked into my cloud and disintegrated it. Poof.
The last words I wrote in my notebook last night were, "I'm frustrated because I'm writing crap." And then I went and played with my cat for a while.
Revisiting the Crap
I kept thinking about that "crap" while I was playing with my rescue cat, Jack. Was it really all crap? I went back once and re-read the three poems I'd spit out. Then I put the notebook down and went back to the living room.
About 30 minutes later, when my husband was safely absorbed in iTunes and sports watching, I meandered back. I sat once again, cross-legged, and got out my pen. Then I slashed and burned.
I salvaged what was sprouting life and put a big black line through everything else. Then I re-read what I'd written. Still kind of crap, but maybe not so bad after all.
As a writer I'm tuning into the fact that I can't be interrupted. When I'm working on a tough creative piece for work, or a blog post, or any sort of personal expression, an interruption can derail the entire process and I have to start over.
So tonight I'm going to write while my husband is at a late basketball game. This was the first part of that process. Next? My little black notebook, with a pen in my hand. The river gushing wild and free. Ok, ok, that's a bit of a hyperbole.
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