Pulling teeth

Pulling teeth. An expression for when it’s hard to get something done, to draw something out of someone. Today I've been pulling my writing teeth. For some reason my writing has slowed down. Maybe it’s thinking about returning to teaching in the next few weeks. Even though I love it, all that preparation and planning can drain my creative juices. So writing today was like moving through molasses, every word I squeezed out was like a dental extraction (and nearly as painful).

I discovered how many distractions I can talk myself into. Cup of tea, put the washing on, make that phone call, shampoo the cat. You get the drift. I admit I succumbed to several cups of tea, and I don't have a cat to shampoo (luckily, because I may have succumbed to that, too) Finally, I decided that the only way through this was, through this. So I gave myself permission to write terrible sentences, and horrible dialogue, and my plot went down the drain and my characters almost screamed at me from the page “What are you doing to us?”

I finished my stint with a paltry 300 words (interspersed with tea and trips to the loo. Ok, and a phone call or two). It had been so painful to get onto the page that my gums may as well have been bleeding (please rinse and spit) It was godawful writing, but it was writing. Truth is, I'm not that far from my goal on my current project. So why the painful tooth grinding? It’s often the emotional discomfort of loss of confidence. I end up agonising over that horrible question that every writer asks themselves; will the writing be any good? The answer is I’ll never know until my words are out there. I just need to get my teeth into it. After I make that cup of tea. 

What I’ve learned from the dung beetle

I've been missing self-imposed blog deadlines. This is usually a sign that there is too much else going on and that I've lost some focus. For me, the stuff that ‘goes on’ is managing health issues, family, working and well…in general… life. When I reflect on this, I realise that not writing, even in small amounts, impacts my mood in a negative way. It’s like there is damming up of ideas, a kind of creative constipation. So when I happened across Entomologist Marcus Bryne’s short video ‘The Dance of the Dung Beetle’, I had an epiphany of sorts. The video is a humorous and fascinating look at this intrepid and persistent creature’s effort to ‘scoop the poop’ in the midst of strong competition and the harsh desert environments.

Most of this bug’s life is conducted in backwards motion (we all know that feeling). But here’s the difference: when he’s thrown off course or disoriented in some way (like by the experimenters who deliberately thwart his route), he climbs to the top of his dung ball, does a little dance using the sun as a point of reference, reorients himself, climbs down and goes on. He knows exactly where he has to go. He keeps the goal in sight even though he’s heading towards it with his butt in the air. It was kind of humbling to realise that here is a creature that lives its whole life in excrement yet it doesn’t sit by bemoaning that fact that life is…well… full of s#*t.

In the video, Byrne explains that the dung beetle uses a complex set of visual clues to keep him life on track. He wonders if it can teach humans how to solve complex visual problems. While I was interested in that aspect, I took a different lesson from the bug's behavior, which was this: it’s possible for life to be full of poop but I can still get on with it. So, I figured that next time I feel like the s#*t is piling up, I can climb to the top of the dung, look to the warmth and nurture of the sun, do a dance (dancing on the inside is acceptable for humans) then push the crap along and just keep going. Persistent pays and every time, the beetle managed to reach his goal regardless of obstructions and distractions.

After that realization, my creative constipation seemed to resolve. I don’t doubt it will come back from time to time but for now I've managed one more blog, which is a start.  

Word countdown…or up?

Recently I discovered another useful tit-bit to add to my writing toolbox. It’s so unbelievably simple that it’s scary. It comes from the fact that is nothing like a deadline or goal to get you cracking! I put together a simple word counting spreadsheet. The formula gives me the word increase for each writing session. its qualitative different to using word count because I can see my progress. For me, that’s important because I can’t sit at the PC for long periods, so in the times I am able to do so do so, every word counts. My goal is to finish with more words than I started knowing that I have limited time available to do it in. Being able to see my progress makes a huge difference to my motivation. Sometimes I add only a few hundred words but every word moves the total forward. I know it isn’t all about the word count but without the words on the page there is nothing to edit and shape. In the last few weeks, this strategy has helped me feel like I can get to the end of my novel – counting on every word.