Lucky for me it was right before class pictures so I have a lasting memory of what it ended up as...
Hot rollers, a perm and access to scissors...yeah...
I'd also like to say that I learned a lesson that day about over fixing, but considering the Groucho Marx eyebrows in 8th grade I'm going to say I didn't.
How many times do we do that? Fix something until it breaks? Like giving something that one extra turn of the screw and stripping it right out. One more breath of air into the balloon and it pops. One more "Are you sure you aren't mad?" question that makes the person REALLY MAD now.
We fixed it.
I realized this week that I had fixed something in my life like that.
I listen to podcasts and I read a ton of books and articles and right now even a textbook. I am constantly on the hunt for information about things that interest me. I am curious by nature. And there is only so much time in the day. So I listen to a podcast at the gym, I listen to one while I'm cleaning, I read when I'm eating lunch, I make sure I take time out to get a couple of chapters of Econ read. For a little bit I was trying to make sure I read a few pages of a book about the history of monopoly powers in the United States until I gave up because it was too boring and reading it was taking forever. I don't want to waste time on a boring book when I have all of these other interesting things to read. Because one of the rules when you write is that you need to fill your well with ideas.
And I really should be writing.
This is only my 3rd blog for February.
But lately when I sit down to write I haven't had much to say. Or it's only a fleeting thought. Nothing that is forming up into a full blog post. I really need to write. Because, as you know, if I don't write I don't write. Writing is a self perpetuating thing, when you write things flow easily and so then you write. But if you don't write then the gears get all gummed up and you don't write. Makes sense, right? Trust me, in my head it does. The more you write, the more you write, and if you stop, man, it's tough to get it going again.
Anyway...the way I generally write is in stages. There is the idea that flashes in my head. If it's a fiction story sometimes it's a scene or a bit of dialog, if it's nonfiction it's, more often than not, an argumentative statement in my head. And then I start to think about whatever it is that I really want to say. I flesh it out. I see where the story is going, or what the argument I'm trying to make is. And then once I think I know exactly what it is I want to write I sit down at the computer and write. Now quite often I don't write the brilliant story or masterful argument I had formed in my head, it will take a different direction as it flows out, but it's similar. Or at least flavored by. The La Croix of writing...
But lately I haven't gone from the first step to the second. The percolating part. I've been so busy filling up the well I forgot that I need it to have room for my own thoughts. I need a well that is full of new ideas and great writing by other people, but I don't want a well that is overflowing. I need to be able to take what I've read, what I've heard, what is going on in the world and mold it into something new. And to do that I need to get bored.
Or not necessarily bored, but open to being bored. Repetitive movement with just background noise is the best. Listening to music while I lift weights or while I clean house. I love the information from the podcasts during this time, it can make the time pass really quickly, but I need to have the slow time to make my own things. You know I am a big one on the Universe talking to you. For the past month (yes, month, just because it's talking doesn't mean I'm listening) I would hear a song that had inspired a short story. Last week at the hockey game there was a Katy Perry song on and I told Brent it had inspired one of my favorite things I'd ever written. Then it finally started to filter in. It was probably 4 times hearing that song at the gym, then thinking about it before the story came to me. Then it was writing it and finding out that what I thought it was going to be it wasn't. But I still love it.
But four times hearing it at the gym.
Then when I think about the "writing" I think about walking on the treadmill and cleaning the shower.
Repetitive movement that I don't have to focus on that gives me space to let my mind wander.
And then today as I was tidying up my binders I looked at the second thing I wrote last year and it was all about how I don't want to hire someone to clean my house because I use that time to work out stories.
Oh right.
Not just listen to podcasts. But work out my own thoughts.
So today I listened to Lizzo while I cleaned. Because I love Lizzo. And because I knew I wanted to write this blog about writing and needed the time to work it out.
So I need to find the balance on filling the well with all the good stuff out there that I want to listen to and read, and leaving the well empty so I can fill it with my own good stuff.
I need a little less fixing.
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