So… ‘member that time I bought that blank journal under the pretext of filling it with writing exercises to get me actually creating real wordsmithery again, versus whatever the hell you wanna call this blog thing?
… And,’ member how I have like 15 of those journals just sitting in my house, because of serial journal-purchase-syndrom, still waiting for words to be put in them, and still totally empty, or long since converted to “show-research-journals?”
… Cuz, ‘member how, (like dusting my house), I totally operate on a best-intention basis, but then often fail in my goals because I don’t wanna dust, potato chips are delicious, and facing a blank piece of paper with proper punctuation, plot, and sentence structure is really hard work?
Well, chalk one up for me, bitches! Cuz, I dun wrote me a story.
It was Sunday. The place: my bed. I had just finished coughing myself awake, and lay there re-exhausted from my efforts. Thinking to myself, “Well, I don’t even care what time it is…I’m so not getting out of bed after all that,” I decided to hide my apparent misplaced weekend-lay-about-in-bed-all-day guilt, by grabbing one of previously described blank journals and popping up my autoprompt app.
…Hating the first two offers on demand, I took the third, and started scribbling long-hand, for what I assumed would be about fifteen minutes. 3.5 hours, eleven pages, and a giant caffeine headache later, I realized that I’d just completed the mutherfucker, and really needed a damn cup of coffee (or 12.)
…Because, that’s the way time works when I’m actively “Arting.” Sketching, researching, line-learning, blogging, or writing…once the juices get goin’, I seriously cease to notice the present reality surrounding me. I’m told that I come by this honestly as an inherited trait. Apparently my great grandmother would start painting in the morning, and still be at it late into the night, with only a depleted sleeve of saltines and empty glass by the canvas as proof of any pause for even sustenance. Which I completely understand, and could “see” with multiple empty stomaches and/or late night writing sessions on whiskey turning into early morning hour alcoholic tendency accompanied by dry Cheerios by the handful, direct from the box…which doesn’t really count as morning alcoholism because technically, I hadn’t gone to bed yet, so it was still just really-late-yesterday o’clock, and anyway stop with that judgy-look, just because you like to hide your morning alcoholism in disgusting tomato juice…!
…Anyway…where was I going with all this? Oh yeah: I wrote a little, this weekend. On like, a real thing. And it’s all pencil-scratchy, with horrendous spelling, and some of the words I can’t even really make out entirely because even stone cold sober, my creative writing comes out looking like a ten year old, arthritic physician wrote it, but still. It’s mine. I haven’t reread it since…so, it’s prob’ly terrible. But, I did it. I said I was going to, and: there it is.
… Only, don’t get too excited though. I have no real intention of dusting, or giving up my post rehearsal junk food. It’s about “baby steps,” people. And at 3.5 hours, I’ve already clocked overtime in good intentions this week.
… The rest is just gonna have to hold its damn water for a while.
~D