The roller-coaster is my life

"...life is a fast, dizzying game; life is a parachute jump; it’s taking chances, falling over and getting up again; it’s mountaineering; it’s wanting to get to the very top of yourself and feeling angry and dissatisfied when you don’t manage it”

I knew there'd come a time when I'd use a quotation by Paulo Coelho. Like a zillion other people I read (and loved) The Alchemist

So - guess what? Yesterday wasn't such a great writing day. I wasn't well (swimmy head and sickness) and I just could NOT get on.

Hooray, though. Today...

 ...and I DON'T feel angry and dissatisfied, just philosophical.

Confession: A tiny part of me wanted to lie and say I'd written loads of pages yesterday. I just didn't want to look like an absolute loser today.

What silly random thoughts enter our brains uninvited.

I am NOT a loser.

Losers are people who give up.

Day 16 Update
3 pages and nausea

A word is not the same with one writer as with another.

 "One tears it from his guts.  The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket."

So said Charles Péguy - a noted French poet, essayist, and editor born in Orléans. So noted, in fact, that I've never heard of him.

I think I could rephrase it to fit in with my writing experiences, starting "One day of writing is not the same as another..."

 
The day before yesterday - tearing words one by one from my guts. Yesterday, pulling them effortlessly from my metaphorical overcoat pocket.

It's the first time for AGES I enjoyed writing (and I tell everyone I do it for fun!)

I did get a little bit peeved when I read this from Viki King's How to Write a Movie in 21 Days: The Inner Movie Method (It's in the fantasy genre!)...bearing in mind I've been battling with this screenplay on and off since January...

Day 3 (says Viki) Write pages 30-45

Day 15 Update
6 pages and joy!

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer.

 Oh, Stephen King, now I'm really disappointed.

Well, yes, I do, actually. (Believe in magic)

Stephen King goes on to say:

 "Your muse lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you."

Caroline's muse - a scary clown in the basement

  "Do you think it’s fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he’s got inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.”

Do I think it's fair?

My muse kept his bag of magic to himself yesterday. I worked for 5 hours and I shudder to look at how much I actually managed to write.

A lot of my (not) writing time  was consumed by me ranting inside about Life Being Unfair.

I set aside a *&^%~@" week so I could write and then my *&^%~@" muse chooses to go on *&^%~@" holiday...

It's hard to be creative when you're ranting inside...

Day 14 Update
3 pages, kicking and screaming

When you are thwarted, it is your own attitude that is out of order

Yes, I KNOW THAT, Meister Eckhart, (German Writer and Theologian, 1260-1328)

I don't feel like having a sermon, either, for your information. Stomp, stomp, stomp.

SO - yesterday, I got on with my screenplay. It was painfully slow. I couldn't get into gear at all. At a loss. Struggling. Thwarted. In despair.

THEN. I remembered the song that Emeli Sandé sang at the closing ceremony of the Olympics -
Read All About It, Pt. III

So I downloaded it from iTunes (other sources of immediate gratification available) - the explicit version with Professor Green - which reflected my mood better (!) -  and I played it at top volume OVER and OVER again.

And it worked. I could write.

The ballad version, above, I've adopted as the theme tune for Team Incredible - the wonderful group of people I'm coaching on the Self-Expression and Leadership Programme.

I wanted to get to page 30 and I didn't (not helped by a mega powercut after a thunderstorm) but I DID get on and feel much more purposeful about today.

Day 13 Update
4 pages and a lot more certainty about the threads of the plot

Now...today...

"What I really fear is time."

"That's the devil: whipping us on when we'd rather loll, so the present sprints by, impossible to grasp, and all is suddenly past, a past that won't hold still..."

That comes from Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists - hmmmm, yes. An appropriate title for my current state of mind, beset by self-doubt.

Well, I DID IT! I worked for six whole hours yesterday (a Sunday!) and finished all my work so that today I could be free, FREE!

And today?  I have TIME. Scary.

No more excuses. Nothing to hide behind. No work deadlines to blame for not cracking on with the screenplay.

Crazy, crazy woman! I fear time when it's rushing by and I'm not getting things done. NOW I fear time because I have some, a whole week of it...

I'm actually creating things to do to fill the yawning space. So I won't have time anymore...

Somebody...please...

Day 12 Update

Zero, numbness

"Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal...

While others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before."

Herodotus. My Hero(dotus)

Here's what I've found to use when I choose to beat myself up:

Very convenient. Hands-free.

You see, I DIDN'T finish all my work yesterday. Not from lack of trying. I just didn't get it done. So yet again, here I am on a Sunday. Outside, the sun's shining. Inside, I'm not.

Resentful? Moi?

(Actually, hardly at all.)

I'm really, almost, very nearly, enticingly close to being THERE.

And when I've finished - what celebrations there will be! What a holiday!

It's hard to enjoy a holiday when you have to ask yourself 'A holiday from WHAT?'

That's one problem I don't have.

Day 11 Update
Zero and frustration

"Too much work, and no vacation...

...Deserves at least a small libation. So hail! my friends, and raise your glasses...

Work's the curse of the drinking classes."  Courtesy of Oscar Wilde (the rhyme, not the picture of the cat)

Today is NEARLY the first day of my self-imposed holiday. I still have a few pieces of work to complete for a client (having made the fatal mistake of announcing that I was taking a break and asking if there was anything that needed doing before Monday!)

I WILL get it done today and then start my holiday properly.

...my writing holiday at home.

That is, not a holiday FROM writing but a holiday FOR writing.

I'll believe it when it happens!

Day 10 Update
Zero and sense of unease