Man lands on the Moon

I missed a job off my list of things to do yesterday. I'd eased myself into denial and determined that I could stay there until I got another email nagging asking for the thing I had to find and telling me that Wed was the deadline.

I had to find a picture of me in 1969.

I’d like to tell you that the my tendency towards OCD means that my photographs are organised into boxed categories including Childhood, University, Before Children, After Children and Bangkok. Sadly, while my compulsive behaviour means I have to have all the light switches facing the same way, and I have push my Thyroxine out of the foil in the right pattern, my photographic memories are thrown higgledy piggledy into a large trunk.

Still, having given my self permission to slump on the writing front, I identified today as the day to go through my photographs. So this morning I set up: labelled up some containers with the above categories. I took my IPod through to listen to podcasts, and opened the box.

Oh it was horrible. It’s a lovely job if you have all the time in the world; you can sit leafing through the memories you’ve made. However, if you have to find a certain picture by the close of today, amongst 47,212 other photos… it’s not so nice. Still, about two hours in I found it:


Now… what I’m wondering is that if I’m under half way through the box… have I got to carry on and finish sorting the photos?

Certification

Now that the Slumps have been officially diagnosed and I’ve got the certificate to prove it, I’m feeling a bit better. Even though I realised it, the words of my mentor have reassured me “…they happen, it’s impossible to work at full creative speed all the time. The best thing is – as it seems to me you’re doing – to listen to it.” We’ve agreed that the last lot of words I send in can be either the next 10k of novel or the working synopsis. Thus far I’ve been writing without a plan of any sort… just knowing the story but it looks as though it’s time to prepare some sort of strategy.

In acknowledging the slumps two things have happened: I can get on and do other jobs that haven’t been done because of my anxious slumpy paralysis and secondly my subconscious has started to think about the story again and the bits of plot I might need to introduce to combat the flat feeling.

I’ve done the updated BWG website this morning … my bits of it: Book Club and the Noticeboard as well as the committee page. I’ve sent overdue emails out. Now I’m in the midst of book buying… for May. Then I have to try to sort out a beach holiday for when SiL and her family come to Thailand in the summer; that sounds fun but it’s hard trawling through the many, many options and making choices for other people. I keep opening up the internet, then faced with so many alternatives I shut it back down again.

Slumps

I’ve been reminded that this is a writing blog.

It used to be much more about writing but that was in the days when mostly I was blogging about not writing. Or the posts would be about how I’d working out what the problem was and now I was on track again.

A couple of days later, I’d be posting about not writing again.

So mostly, it’s accurate to say that I when I talk here about writing … I’m not… writing, that is.

I haven’t been writing recently. There seems to be so much else to do but I recognise that I’m not using my time efficiently. I could do it all; I could certainly do more. So what is it?

There’s often talk about the 30,000 word slump or the 70,000 word slump and I’ve never been able to join in because I didn’t know (other than the No Word Slump, about which I can expound for weeks) which was my personal slump.

Anyway, I’ve got it: I think it’s the 50,000 word slump.

I’ve managed so far to weave in my various story lines between all the characters and now I’ve got all these balls in the air and I haven’t the remotest idea how to manage their coming back down to earth. And that’s what I’ve got to do… They can’t all arrive at catching height at the very same second because I’ve only got two hands and after all I have to hold out on the reader. Some of the issues have to be resolved later than others but all the subplots are tied up within the central story…

…so how to do it?

*Sigh*