This is awful and I don't know what to do about it.
For weeks, almost since Halloween I have been struggling with putting anything down on 'paper'. No spark for storytelling at all, not Flash Fiction or one of my novels, not even this most of the time. Normally I eventually find something to write about but it's a struggle. Much of the time I don't and I have to wring blood from the turnip. Today is one of those 'don't' days and I'm starting to get frustrated, which I know won't help.
The story I was working leading into Halloween stalled. It sat, dead in the water, while I went through the shock I suffered a few weeks back. Then, a week or so ago, a little niggle suggested that mayyybe I might be up for trying something. Too soon. That little spark went out and I was back in the dark.
I pretended, hard, that it was okay, that it wasn't bothering me, but it was and it is. Finally, yesterday, I wrote out some ideas that I have for this story and, in doing so, I realized both the problem and the solution.
First, the problem. I'm bored with it. It's... okay, but it's not good. To a new reader, fresh eyes, they probably wouldn't realize it's boring until another thirty pages on, then it would catch up with them. I can see the eyes glazing and attention wandering now.
Second, the solution. I need to condense the scenes and I need to raise a question. A great big hairball of a question to get the reader sitting up on the edge of their seat. The concept of what I need to do was sitting there, in a dusty back corner of my mind, but I couldn't entice it forward. For days I tried and got nowhere. Desperate, I got a long stick and poked and prodded and nothing. It sat there, pretty much sticking its tongue out at me. So I decided to circumvent it, flank it, and I wrote down a summary of the set-up followed by what I have and my options for making it better.
That worked. The idea slunk forward, reluctantly, until... Hallelujah! It came far enough forward I could see it, capture it and hold onto it. Now the problem is trying to find a block of time to focus on this, to get it down, or at least get it started.
This morning might have been a good time, but.... I woke up at a little before four o'clock after having a horrible dream.
It's weird and a bit faded now, but essentially I had decided The Time had come for my exit. It was a normal thing in this dream world, legal and okay. I went to a clinic and had the drugs administered. While I'm fading I decide I have to speak to Daughter. Somehow I get to her and I'm talking to her, realizing that I have only a short time to live but what I have to say is urgent. I'm having trouble getting it out and I can feel myself getting weaker. Suddenly, out of nowhere while I'm talking to her and trying to pass this crucial mumble of intended meaning, I'm using a ShopVac to clean out my car. It's whirring, I'm dying, and she's listening and nothing is going well.
It was weird and unsettling and I woke up and couldn't shake the feeling of impending Doom. It was hours before it passed and, instead of having that extra waking time to focus and write, I was thinking about that weird dream.
Then there was work and learning the new stuff I'm being given (which, it turns out, is nothing to worry about). And I wanted to get this done and did what I've done all too often lately. I sat down and started this morning. Actually in a snatched few minutes before I had to start getting ready for work. It was more pressing to me then, and I knew I didn't have enough time to do anything decent with the other, so I stabbed at this and flamed out.
I got to work and at lunch I started again, but it wasn't... good. Or it wasn't good enough. It was too hard, a struggle, so I gave up as I ran out of time.
Finally, tossing out the idea I started with this morning and tried to develop at lunch, I got here, admitting to all and sundry my state of mental erectile dysfunction.
And that's weird, too, cuz I'm a girl. But I don't know what else to call it. I want to do 'it'. I need to do 'it'. But I can't do it because things aren't cooperating or working as they should.
Maybe in another twelve or fourteen hours I'll get a spark and maybe I can coax that spark into a flame again. I hope so because this being in the dark is awful.
Now, though, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to coaxing, but I wish you a brilliant day where ideas flow easily and fully.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Showing posts with label Bad Dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bad Dreams. Show all posts
Monday, January 18, 2016
Friday, August 7, 2015
Cheating, a Veggie Purist and a Moose in a Trench
I'm cheating but it's confirmed. I just checked and I am absolutely sure - I'm a Veggie Purist.
I'm cheating because this is Thursday afternoon, not Friday, but I just blew up my head and deserve a break. Since I'm hungry, I'm spending my break with my veggies, which is what I just checked and confirmed. Explaining so we're clear.
As for the veggies and their purity, it doesn't go for all veggies. Not salads, for instance. Salads need dressing, but for everything else except a few select items, like potatoes, I like my veggies plain, simple and pure. Just as nature intended.
At Costco, a warehouse outlet that sells a lot of things in big commercial-type packages (fifteen rolls of paper towels, full cases of bottled drinks and water, five pound bags and boxes of 'stuff') I buy bags of frozen veggies. It's a mixed bunch - broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. The other day I brought some for lunch and decided to mix the mix a bit - I added just a splash of salad dressing. I didn't like it. Today I have some more of the veggies and heated it. I'm eating it plain and it's so much better.
This strikes me a little odd because I know there are people out there who cannot eat veggies without 'stuff' all over them. Like cheese sauce or butter or something else. I guess that goes back to 'it takes all kinds' and 'variety is the spice of life'. Me? Pure as day - just the veggies with no nothing. Unless it's in chow mein or something else. Then it's got to have something.
My head blew up because someone here sent me a document they needed translated to the new form I've created for our Document Control process. WHEW!!
It came in Excel - which is not a word processor - and included pictures. I converted it to Word, brought the pictures across and captioned them, fit it into the 'box' of my template and did a 'sanity check' for clarity and readability. Three hours - which isn't bad considering the complexity - but it was three solid hours of thinking.
I've never known this process that was in the document existed, let alone how to do it (now I could). I had to figure things out as I went and make it look "pretty" - which it does. Now I'm sitting here waiting to hear back from the director and his subordinate supervisor who's the one who needs this. I just hope they like it!
And I'm cheating - a break for a few to get this started and let my head recongeal.
Okay - that's enough. Head is back together and I'm back to work. I'll pick this up tomorrow morning.
Friday morning - twenty till six and the stupid wifi isn't cooperating.
Instead of being comfortable on the sofa over there ==>, I'm standing at the kitchen island because I can't get a wireless signal over there ==> this morning. I don't get it. Why did it work yesterday morning? Why not last night or this morning? What's changed except atmospheric conditions?
Irritating and incomprehensible, but whatever. Not worth worrying about because It Is.
MIL is sleeping in our living room - so I can't go in there. That became her bedroom after her stroke three years ago, so it's off-limits except for cleaning and I don't want to wake her, so I won't sit at the dining room table. Which is why I'm standing here.
Ah! The compromises of life.
When I get to work this morning, I've got to convert my beautiful new Gantt charts to Excel. No straight data dump possible - it's too ugly to comprehend. You have to use a pre-set template form in Excel that includes a bunch of stuff I don't want or need, so I'll copy and paste, then format to get it to look as I want it to look.
It's time consuming and a nuisance, but that will be my morning. I hope, by noon, to get feedback on that other document I worked on yesterday.
Last evening, I posted the open of the book I'm re-working to one of the threads on Authonomy. I got good feedback so have some more changes to make. But it is always good to get other eyes on it as it goes, to make sure you're hitting on all cylinders.
Other than that, I'm looking forward to work and the weekend. They will take my mind off the horrible dream to which I woke. It was weird. A company with whom we do business, a plane crash and me standing in the middle of a six-lane highway next to a car parked on a dirt median with its front tire about three inches from an open trench that has cobbled sides. Up to the cobbled trench walls, it's at least a little comprehensible, but what construction crew on Earth is going to take the time and go to the expense to cobble a trench wall? The stupid thing is there to be filled back in again!
Sheesh. Anyway, I saw the plane crash and the explosion. Someone I knew, nominally, was aboard the plane, and I'm standing next to the car next to the trench on the dirt median.
The trench is okay - I kind of get that - because in my training I talk about excavating a trench and show this picture:
With those two guys standing there, in a stare down with a bull moose, I would have loved to have been there for that conversation!
I suspect the excavator in the background is working to lay back the trench wall (behind the meeses - two or more mooses = meeses in our house) so they can get the poor guy back on level ground. It would still be one heckuva start to your workday.
So back to my hemi-demi-nightmare. The company name I also recognize, although that isn't a company that touches my work world except on the periphery of my job's periphery.
Plane crash and the rest of it? Uhhh... I dunno. Oh well. It was disturbing and not how I like waking up. Well, writing this and work and thinking of stuff will take my mind off of it.
Have a lovely day!
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
I'm cheating because this is Thursday afternoon, not Friday, but I just blew up my head and deserve a break. Since I'm hungry, I'm spending my break with my veggies, which is what I just checked and confirmed. Explaining so we're clear.
As for the veggies and their purity, it doesn't go for all veggies. Not salads, for instance. Salads need dressing, but for everything else except a few select items, like potatoes, I like my veggies plain, simple and pure. Just as nature intended.
At Costco, a warehouse outlet that sells a lot of things in big commercial-type packages (fifteen rolls of paper towels, full cases of bottled drinks and water, five pound bags and boxes of 'stuff') I buy bags of frozen veggies. It's a mixed bunch - broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. The other day I brought some for lunch and decided to mix the mix a bit - I added just a splash of salad dressing. I didn't like it. Today I have some more of the veggies and heated it. I'm eating it plain and it's so much better.
This strikes me a little odd because I know there are people out there who cannot eat veggies without 'stuff' all over them. Like cheese sauce or butter or something else. I guess that goes back to 'it takes all kinds' and 'variety is the spice of life'. Me? Pure as day - just the veggies with no nothing. Unless it's in chow mein or something else. Then it's got to have something.
My head blew up because someone here sent me a document they needed translated to the new form I've created for our Document Control process. WHEW!!
It came in Excel - which is not a word processor - and included pictures. I converted it to Word, brought the pictures across and captioned them, fit it into the 'box' of my template and did a 'sanity check' for clarity and readability. Three hours - which isn't bad considering the complexity - but it was three solid hours of thinking.
I've never known this process that was in the document existed, let alone how to do it (now I could). I had to figure things out as I went and make it look "pretty" - which it does. Now I'm sitting here waiting to hear back from the director and his subordinate supervisor who's the one who needs this. I just hope they like it!
And I'm cheating - a break for a few to get this started and let my head recongeal.
Okay - that's enough. Head is back together and I'm back to work. I'll pick this up tomorrow morning.
Friday morning - twenty till six and the stupid wifi isn't cooperating.
Instead of being comfortable on the sofa over there ==>, I'm standing at the kitchen island because I can't get a wireless signal over there ==> this morning. I don't get it. Why did it work yesterday morning? Why not last night or this morning? What's changed except atmospheric conditions?
Irritating and incomprehensible, but whatever. Not worth worrying about because It Is.
MIL is sleeping in our living room - so I can't go in there. That became her bedroom after her stroke three years ago, so it's off-limits except for cleaning and I don't want to wake her, so I won't sit at the dining room table. Which is why I'm standing here.
Ah! The compromises of life.
When I get to work this morning, I've got to convert my beautiful new Gantt charts to Excel. No straight data dump possible - it's too ugly to comprehend. You have to use a pre-set template form in Excel that includes a bunch of stuff I don't want or need, so I'll copy and paste, then format to get it to look as I want it to look.
It's time consuming and a nuisance, but that will be my morning. I hope, by noon, to get feedback on that other document I worked on yesterday.
Last evening, I posted the open of the book I'm re-working to one of the threads on Authonomy. I got good feedback so have some more changes to make. But it is always good to get other eyes on it as it goes, to make sure you're hitting on all cylinders.
Other than that, I'm looking forward to work and the weekend. They will take my mind off the horrible dream to which I woke. It was weird. A company with whom we do business, a plane crash and me standing in the middle of a six-lane highway next to a car parked on a dirt median with its front tire about three inches from an open trench that has cobbled sides. Up to the cobbled trench walls, it's at least a little comprehensible, but what construction crew on Earth is going to take the time and go to the expense to cobble a trench wall? The stupid thing is there to be filled back in again!
Sheesh. Anyway, I saw the plane crash and the explosion. Someone I knew, nominally, was aboard the plane, and I'm standing next to the car next to the trench on the dirt median.
The trench is okay - I kind of get that - because in my training I talk about excavating a trench and show this picture:
With those two guys standing there, in a stare down with a bull moose, I would have loved to have been there for that conversation!
I suspect the excavator in the background is working to lay back the trench wall (behind the meeses - two or more mooses = meeses in our house) so they can get the poor guy back on level ground. It would still be one heckuva start to your workday.
So back to my hemi-demi-nightmare. The company name I also recognize, although that isn't a company that touches my work world except on the periphery of my job's periphery.
Plane crash and the rest of it? Uhhh... I dunno. Oh well. It was disturbing and not how I like waking up. Well, writing this and work and thinking of stuff will take my mind off of it.
Have a lovely day!
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
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