The words aren’t coming easily in my novel writing this week (and last week!). So my character is stoned and I’m giving him a good day, at last, after suffering loss and confusion (okay, the drugs aren’t helping with his confusion). He is stoned out of his mind! He is going to have some fun! But there I stall. Because I have to listen to him because this is a deviation from my original plan and he’s leading me in this diversion.
I’m feeling like a tyrant of a writer–I’ve got my plot and my agenda, and dammit, why aren’t my characters following the plan?! (Because they don’t want to. I better give them many more good days and give them more leeway to do what they want instead of what I demand).
Speaking of plans. I’m working on a syllabus and lesson plans for the Fall semester. With teaching, there’s got to be some kind of plan–but there, I feel plan-less.
I’ve got a relationship I’m building. Family. And there too, I am in need of a framework. I’m feeling lost without it, feeling downright edgy and tense, and that mood isn’t any good for relationship building. So I’m working on giving myself some security.
Sometime I long for the days when I was still in early recovery from the stroke, where I lived entirely in the present tense, because my memory failed me and made planning and fretting impossible.
I too, need a break from the plan. I want to live in a little house in Big Sky country or an apartment in Manhattan or just in this house in Berkeley without a daily agenda or obligations or responsibilities. I want what I want. I want no plan. Just for a little while?
Can I play?
1 Comment
July 15, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Oh, I hope so! xoxo