Wednesday, November 29, 2000

 

10:41 a.m. I always said I wanted to be busy. I always said I wanted to have multiple irons in the fire. In fact, I once read a description of the way that Isaac Asimov worked: several typewriters on different desks, swivel chair, different books and reviews and projects in each typewriter. Piles of ms. neatly stacked beside each machine.

Oh, how I envied that picture. If you run out of steam on one sentence, you merely have to roll your chair over to a new angle, tap out the conclusion to a different thought, and never, ever worry about blocks, down-time, crashing interruptions ...

... of course, Isaac had women running the household beyond that office door. I have a feeling that he didn't have to scrounge for clean socks or smidgens of mayo for his tunafishonrye. This is just a theory I have. Just a calculated hunch. Call me psychic.

1:17 a.m. So, if I want to be able to work like Isaac, I've got to stop being Isaac's wife. The day's tasks are done, but my little bit of creative preciousness has been interrupted. Quel surprise.

But here's the most amazing thing. Last night, after I broke through the crusty dusty fear and posted a little entry, I went off to bed, as is my wont. But lo, instead of tossing and dreaming about urls and jpegs and nesting table data (I'm not kidding about this -- I wish I were ...) -- instead I had a dream about creative distance, about how I was going to describe my reactions to the election.

In other words, I was writing again. I write whenever I step outside the moment and look at it so that I can write about it. It's an odd way of thinking ... it's a clumsy way to live ... but you know what? It's what's been missing these last long weeks.

I've had a bunch of tasks and scroungings and smidgens to accomplish, and for efficiency's sake, I stopped stopping to think. Why form an opinion or take a mental snapshot if there is no time to develop it? Just do it, do it again, do it again. What you get -- is done.

But then there's this little thing. This niggly little thing.

Nowadays, I call it The Journal, and what a lovable monster it has become! In the old days, it might have been "my writing" or "my novel" or "my homework" or even "my journal" with a lower-case whispering soft j, and in the old days I could have neglected it a little longer before any real trouble set in.

And so. Here we are ... everything back where it's supposed to be ... me in the chair at the end of the day, trays are in the upright position, and we're ready for takeoff. Lots of levers and knobs and dials and buttons: there's that Harris woman and there's my own hair-brained grassy-knoll theory; there are a couple of boys in my front library and I'm going to sneak in and take their picture so you can see how strange things have gotten around here ... and what else? There's a small tree full of limons just in time for cocktail hour and there's some new developments in the book biz that I want to talk about and yes, it's after 2 a.m. and I'm going to try not to drag this out but I just wanted to say:

I can't believe how much I love to fly!