Adventures du jour!
Mostly the last couple of days have been beating my head against a new story for a class/anthology. I had to build a different music playlist for it because the main character tolerates dance music about as well as I’d tolerate an extra hole in the head. The story is done and sent! And the title isn’t even terrible: “Ugly Sweater Fandango.”
But now my mental radio has hard rock with punk influences in it. I’m not mad about it…I just don’t remember how to dance around madly to rock anymore, and I’m too old to even think about headbanging. Just no.
I talked to a friend today (one yesterday, too! a luxurious amount of conversations) about what it’s like to write without plotting ahead of time, since she’s been writing that way more often, too. She said it was helpful so I’ll mention it here:
I don’t write a lot of plot ahead of time, and what little I do inevitably goes off the rails. BUT the important part is, I feel like a complete lunatic every time I do it. It never becomes something I feel comfortable with. Almost inevitably I go, “WHAT AM I DOING I HAVE NO IDEA WHY I’M WRITING THIS UGH.”
Even though I *know,* because this is not anywhere near the first or fiftieth or even two hundredth story that I’ve written, that this fine, it never feels comfortable.
I freak out every single time.
It’s not the Dunning-Kreuger effect, where because I have the experience to know how hard writing actually is, that I’m aware of the possibility of failure. It’s not imposter syndrome, although it certainly *sounds* like it. But I know that I’m a good writer, and I can usually identify the reasons when writing, even my own, doesn’t work or doesn’t hit what I want it to hit. I believe in myself as a writer now.
I feel like my reaction has more to do with how minds react to change than it does with me as a writer. If I’m doing my job right, every story I write has something new in it that I haven’t written before and which makes me uncomfortable.
In order to finish the story, I have to change on some level; I have to not only deal with the thing I don’t want to deal with, but I have to write it so other people can deal with it, too, whether that’s a character that makes me uncomfortable, a writing technique that feels uncomfortable, or just a story that feels like “too much.”
This story was definitely not an exception. The character’s comfort with navigating a corrupt world made me intensely uncomfortable for a while. And there was a LOT of description.
…
Yoga: the last couple of mornings I’ve had more strength than stamina. I’ll get through about half the routine and just switch to rolling out my back on the foam roller.
I thought more about the “stretch” vs. “lengthen” idea from the Yoga Anatomy book. I *do* know how to lengthen without stretching. It’s “release.” When I’m releasing my hips downward, it feels weird because I’m not experiencing a sense of stretching. “Where are my hips? They’re far, far away!” Releasing something isn’t stretching. It’s not really relaxing, either. I’m not sure how to explain it. I hope the book talks about it soon.
Walk: My knees continue to hurt a fair amount, so I haven’t gone that far for the last few days (although at least half a mile to a mile). What seems to help is focusing on my hips and ankles. I’m not trying to do anything with them, mind you, just to notice where they are in relation to each other. But apparently that helps. Somehow. It’s a mystery.
Mr. Assassin has been showing up fairly often, but he’s quiet–a bit sad. His scene is up next, now that I have this short story done.
Movement: I ended up thinking about strength vs. lightness today. I am always drawn to lighter, faster movements, getting into and out of spaces quickly. (Charleston for the win!) And yet I’ve been building more muscle and expanding into heavier, stronger movements. I ended up on the floor both yesterday and today, appropriate for the respective songs but still weird to find myself moving differently through space. It’s hard to be “light” when you’re off your feet. And the extra strength has been showing up in movements during lighter-feeling songs. It’s interesting.
I had to do some work with Laban movement in college for theater classes, and disliked it. It was one of those things that I was always getting wrong without any real explanation of what was right. But the older I get the more it makes sense.
Words are my main art but they also suck sometimes. They’re really the cherry on top of a bunch of nonverbal communication. I’m often stuck forcing words to be the whole of communication. Throwing on a song as a MOOD is usually better, when I run out of energy to do words. And dancing that MOOD is better yet.
Everything else has fallen by the wayside for the last couple of days, because of fighting with the story.
Up next: groceries that I’ve been putting off since Monday and at least a couple of Hades runs.
And, I hope, moving Mr. Assassin through his scene, as gently as possible. It’s a bad one.