(OR GETTING READY TO)

I write in fits and spurts. My creativity is manic, I am either bursting with ideas or drained of imagination. This does not account for the executive dysfunction or perfectionism or life in general getting in the way, or of my “fear” of doing the damn thing (which is a combination of all of these things). “What if I can’t write what I’m imagining in my head?” “What if what I think is brilliant will bore others?” “I can’t start this part until I’ve got this other part figured out first, but this part is what’s got me excited…”

And of course, not delivering for extended periods of time leads to imposter syndrome. Harper Lee got it in one (for a real long time, anyway)! Who cares how many pieces I have, right? But I do have more stories to tell, I just beat myself up in the process of telling them.

The first draft cannot be written until I have the necessary materials. It’s like going to the Home Depot of Idea Land, I have to gather up materials and tools. This is reading and ruminating. I will write snippets of ideas, and sometimes those end up in a final piece, but a lot of my initial writing is practice. All this lumber and siding and plumbing and shingles, I want to build a house you can walk into and it feels lived in, but you can’t see the joints.

The first draft is the framework of the house. But if you’ve ever seen a neighborhood being constructed, there are all these wooden skeletons of houses on dirt lots. There might be shiny, white concrete driveways sitting empty next to huge trash bins and dirty trucks and plastic tarps weathering. This place looks dead, but in six months, it’ll have green grass, a tree, and a family of four in all the houses with clean cars and regular trash bins for the collectors to pick up on Thursdays. You won’t see a construction zone anymore, you’ll see where people live.

My vomit draft(s) is all the cruft on the side. A lot of it will be discarded, but sometimes the foreman in my brain, who is just Steve Martin from the Jerk where he’s saying he doesn’t need anything…except all this junk. Something gets blown up, something gets glued back together. Trash becomes building materials, fresh ideas become trash. It’s a vicious cycle, this vomiting up something to work with; but in my head, with how I write, this constant churn, this slurry of ideas, eventually yields a piece of sheetrock. A door. Windows that fit neatly and will let the light in just right…

I’ve been to Imaginary Lowes a lot of times on my current WIP. And sometimes I think I’ve got a handle on it in a way that makes me want to tear through it. The high-highs of my creativity. And it was a confluence of ideas, external and internal over the last couple of weeks that have led to maybe forging ahead like I want to.

I may finally have scaffolding strong enough to hold up all this trash the Jerk said needs to be in this book. It’s vomit-draft time. It’s the first-first draft. Putting it all on paper and then sliding the pieces around and doing the shaving and plaining and sanding and all the This Old House buzz words so that I can make something so well machined you’ll think it’s hewn from a single block.

And this? Blogging about nothing really? A look into my writing process, and that I sometimes will write anything else to keep from writing the thing. It’s first gear. I’ve started typing and I’ve said something and I can proofread this and this is short, so I can move straight into the thing.

Okay, bye.