Entry tags:
MP: Volcanoes and Paragraphs
Let's see if I can't use this the way it's intended, to clear my head of cobwebs before I begin the day's writing. I'm at a stopping place in two stories I'm working on, where I know what needs to happen next, but I haven't started writing it yet, and the blank page streaming on and on in a vast ribbon of white under the completed text looks like an abyss. I keep finding things to procrastinate with, like shiny new story ideas I want to start, blog reading, blog writing, email, facebook, and tasks I really do need to get done (like finding a headache doctor). And I know it's procrastination. Even if a lot of it is justifiable procrastination.
The truth is, I'm scared shitless of that unfilled space. In a lot of ways I get the same feeling about writing the next part that I do about cleaning my room. It looks like a vast sea of chaos, and I don't know where to begin, and a little flutter of panic sets in. Now I know Annie Lamott's excellent advice is to tackle it "bird by bird". To just take it one step at a time. Write the next paragraph, not the next chapter. The next sentence, not the next paragraph, if paragraphs seem too daunting. The next word, if that's all you can manage. And then the next one and the next. And that's usually how I tackle it, I make myself get through it, dragging myself through the process like the tiny Mexican boy in a story I read when I was seven had to drag his reluctant mule along a road it had taken a dislike to. In that story, if I'm remembering it correctly, it turned out the mule had good reason for its recalcitrance, because the cornfield it was refusing to go quietly past developed a volcano in the middle of it. (True story, in 1943 the volcano Parícutin sprang up in a very surprised Michoacán farmer's cornfield.)
I suppose in some ways you could say my mule is having the same problem. Once I start writing, a mountain will take over that flat empty page. Except I'm also the geologic forces creating the mountain. And I do want to write the stories. I almost couldn't get to sleep last night, with my brain too full of story to stop. So the mule driver in me really doesn't see what the problem is here. But equines are well known for their irrationality. Horses spook and shy at the slightest provocation — especially fluttering bits of white paper — and the terms "mulish" and "ass" certainly didn't come out of nowhere.
Horse, while we're at it, has been my primary totem since I was born. Born at the tail end of the Year of the Fire Horse, as a matter of fact, and under the western sign of Capricorn (which ok, that's a goat, but goats and mules share a certain insouciance about the desires of others, do they not?) So it's no surprise to me that I'm running into all these equine problems. Maybe I should do a guided meditation into a place where Horse and Mule and I can have a talk about how really, paper isn't frightening, and that volcano is entirely under my control.
OK, I'm off to be a force of nature. That volcano started as a fissure in a field, and cinder by cinder, it became a mountain. Bird by bird. Word by word.
The truth is, I'm scared shitless of that unfilled space. In a lot of ways I get the same feeling about writing the next part that I do about cleaning my room. It looks like a vast sea of chaos, and I don't know where to begin, and a little flutter of panic sets in. Now I know Annie Lamott's excellent advice is to tackle it "bird by bird". To just take it one step at a time. Write the next paragraph, not the next chapter. The next sentence, not the next paragraph, if paragraphs seem too daunting. The next word, if that's all you can manage. And then the next one and the next. And that's usually how I tackle it, I make myself get through it, dragging myself through the process like the tiny Mexican boy in a story I read when I was seven had to drag his reluctant mule along a road it had taken a dislike to. In that story, if I'm remembering it correctly, it turned out the mule had good reason for its recalcitrance, because the cornfield it was refusing to go quietly past developed a volcano in the middle of it. (True story, in 1943 the volcano Parícutin sprang up in a very surprised Michoacán farmer's cornfield.)
I suppose in some ways you could say my mule is having the same problem. Once I start writing, a mountain will take over that flat empty page. Except I'm also the geologic forces creating the mountain. And I do want to write the stories. I almost couldn't get to sleep last night, with my brain too full of story to stop. So the mule driver in me really doesn't see what the problem is here. But equines are well known for their irrationality. Horses spook and shy at the slightest provocation — especially fluttering bits of white paper — and the terms "mulish" and "ass" certainly didn't come out of nowhere.
Horse, while we're at it, has been my primary totem since I was born. Born at the tail end of the Year of the Fire Horse, as a matter of fact, and under the western sign of Capricorn (which ok, that's a goat, but goats and mules share a certain insouciance about the desires of others, do they not?) So it's no surprise to me that I'm running into all these equine problems. Maybe I should do a guided meditation into a place where Horse and Mule and I can have a talk about how really, paper isn't frightening, and that volcano is entirely under my control.
OK, I'm off to be a force of nature. That volcano started as a fissure in a field, and cinder by cinder, it became a mountain. Bird by bird. Word by word.