My Brain Is Not Flying

You ever have one of those days where your mind is just vibrating with thoughts, random notions firing left, right and center, all kinds of new things filling your brain and pushing each other around until you just can't stand it and you have to take a moment and write it all down?
   I haven't. Not for a while now, anyway.
   I'm not sure what the deal is – I'm blaming work but it could be almost anything – but I haven't had a good brainstorming day in a very long time. And it's kind of pissing me off.
   Used to be I would get vapor-locked from time to time, where the ideas I knew were up in my gray matter wouldn't make their way down to my fingers so I could write them down or type them out. I don't believe in writer's block, but I do believe that you can get so wrapped around the axle and concerned about other things that you kind of forget how to remember, if that make any sense. Usually when that sort of thing happened to me I would go do yard work, or take a walk, or something else physical and mindless, to unlatch my brain from whatever was holding it down and let it soar free.
   Without fail I would be trudging behind the lawn mower or swimming laps in the pool and I could almost hear the 'pop' as whatever was blocking the flow dislodged. Then I'd have a different problem, trying to remember all these new things when there was nothing nearby to write with or to write on. Still, I'd gotten my creativity back to where it needed to be.
   My brain's not flying lately. Not that I'm doing bad work – I think I'm probably a better writer at this moment than ever – but with long experience has come a routine. I get in my hour or two a day with more on the weekends, write and revise, and keep the creative process going. But I don't have leaps any longer, no frantic flashes of brilliant inspiration or hours-long marathons of pencil-breaking creativity. I think I manage the creative process better, but I also manage it without passion.
   I gotta fix that.
   I need to unleash my brain again, to let it run wild and wherever it wants with me clinging to it like a terrified rider, wondering where and when the mad dash is going to be over and hoping I don't get hurt in the process. Or maybe hoping I do, whatever brings better results.

Puttin' It Out There

A few weeks back I declared that I was tired of being 'between assignments' and that I wanted to start working again. Well, Mama always said to be careful what you wish for. I landed a contracting gig, had an interview for a regular job and then a second one today, and I found three other good jobs I applied for in case that one doesn't pan out.
   Trouble is, all this working to make rent money is severely cutting into my writing time. The fact that I finished several books while holding down a full time job is now nothing short of miraculous to me. I have to find that discipline again, I don't have the whole day free to schedule however I wish any longer. I finished a book in January, and another one in March, but with my schedule the way it is now, I don't know when I would finish another. November? December? Who knows?
   I figured that what I needed to do was confess my desires in a public forum, much like I did my desire to start working again, and see if the Universe arranges for things to happen again. So here it goes:
   I'm tired of working for someone else. I want to be a published author. I have fiction that is as good as anything on the shelves right now and I just need to get my foot in the door. I also have great non-fiction proposals that will make excellent books - an alphabet book for early readers with half the profits going to animal shelters, for example - that just need to get seen by the right people to make them happen.
   There you are. It's out there, floating through the aether. I've tossed my bottle into the ocean, let's see what shore it washes up on.


COMMUTE: there - 40 minutes     back - does not compute, I had an interview
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 65 days