I only realised that I had packed up what I was doing last Friday, instinctively protecting the story, when I went to start working on Monday morning and I saw the A4 sheet of notes of where I had finished the week and where I wanted to start. The curse of the dreaded ‘short week’ had struck. I had seen it coming and acted without even registering it so great is my fear of crushing this new happy feeling I am cultivating around this writing work.
Today is Good Friday and there is a Bank Holl on Monday so two short weeks – and in this week I also had dentist and hygienist appointments – they both cancelled after I had arrived there – and the main business is less predictable and this lead to the only predictability being that I couldn’t predict any thing at all least of all that I would not be interrupted in deed and thought. My instinct last week to pack up and leave ready to go – even though I hadn’t even been aware of what I was doing at the time – was spot on – if I had logiced it I would have thought I could keep going but something knew better!
Even my desire to walk to the lake and find the abandoned chapel and do another walk on an adjacent hill fort landscape feature did not occur.
Art saved me from the insanity that loomed and gave me useful tasks that served my self respect: I finished swatch naming in several water colour sets that I had left half done last year and I finally got around to making myself label the 100 Inktense sticks in the large tin – that I bought several years ago and cannot bare to use because I can’t tell which is which ‘in the moment’. I now know which is which is which and can carry on accordingly.
I then realised that my non fiction project had lagged a little behind the fiction and so I collated photo shoots and prose notes into their Scrivener 3 project files. I always have a non fiction project or three in hand: ponies, garden, farm, writing adventures, art-wise activity, goats and dairy. I do this without thought of publication it is just an extension of diaries and note books and photo shoots that I keep anyway. I am a Writer because I write. One of the reasons I am an Artist is to tell stories without the written word. two sides of a spinning coin.
As for next week? The second short week. We’ll see. The main business is working today and will be working on the BH too so it will be down to The Three Lemons of Life: Weather, Circumstances and Money. If all three are equally non threatening and are neatly lined up then I may well get on with the story. If not it will be the next suitable occurrence of Three Lemons on the slot machine of My Life.
Lot’s of gambling ‘suggestives’ there and to that I can only wince and add may be I will ‘break even’ but of course I will – we all do.
Rufus now back in his ‘sweet itch’ rags for ‘summer’ AKA till next November.