Tag Archives: Mood

First Casualty

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The first casualty of stress isn’t free time, it’s creativity.

The real world has been conspiring against me for a while now, attempting to hamper my creative efforts. It has been quite successful – just not enough of anything to push forward. Get finished with the real world requirements and fall over, drained.

Yes, there are lots of ‘creative’ solutions to whatever thing is going on outside of computer land, but that is generally exhausting and limiting all bundled into one. I’ve had a handful of times when I was without “something to do” over the past couple of months, but never a time when I’d had the space or physical and emotional recovery time to make something of it.

Recovery time is an important aspect of that. Just because the immediate issue has passed doesn’t mean everything just pops over into the creative stream and gushes out full speed. More than once I’ve sat here with fingers on keys just trying to will myself to type anything and failing. I’ve watched hours of short videos on YouTube, sometimes repeating the same ones because there’s some spark there that isn’t challenging and there’s an odd comfort to that. That moment of “oh, there’s an idea” and it just falls apart or I can’t get the energy to move has been real.

Sometimes I can’t wait for the muse or the recovery. Sometimes I just need to push ahead and put words on a page. They might not be good words. They might not be spelled correctly or they’ll have terrible grammar, but they’ll push my body to remember the part where I can sit and type for something that doesn’t involve work or an insurance company.

The big hurdle will be taking that process and putting the creativity back into it. Let’s see how this challenge goes.

Mood Matters

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I know that being a pro in the field of writing – any writing – requires the ability to write on demand. Deadlines must be met. Words must be produced. Nobody will pay you for the fanciful ideas floating in your head until you write them down (or draw them, or paint them, or build them). Waiting for inspiration is the direct path to never selling anything. Writing takes practice. It means repetition and expansion and edits among many other things.

I often quote a very famous author who has a slick statement about inspiration. “I don’t have a muse, I have a mortgage…” is a great quote. It’s easy to say. It’s hard to back that up.

I am far more attached to my mood than is good for anyone who wishes to be successful as a creative artist of any kind. The combination of creative drain from my day job, my inability to focus on a single kind of creativity and the things that happen in my day to day life often mean I am drained and just have no creative juice left to flow when I get to the keys.

I want to include some kind of declaration here about how I intend to do more, be better or whatever would fit, but the truth is that mood matters. I have made many declarations like this in the past and none of them have ever pushed me past certain barriers. Schedules, task lists, extensive notes are all wonderful and helpful things but none of those produce inspiration. There’s no spark. I’m going to keep struggling along in the best way I can. I’ll keep looking for that moment when a story leaps fully formed from my head, into my fingers and directly through the keys. Mood matters.

What inspires you?

Blah

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There are days when it’s a real struggle to get words on the page. Sometimes just writing a short, easy statement can help with that. Some days is doesn’t help at all. Sometimes the stress of life puts a real, genuine damper on the production of words.

Most days I will tell people that I eat stress for breakfast then head out to take on the day. Most days.

Last week really pushed the needle on the stress meter. There was simply a ton of things that went pear shaped – not just for me, but for family and super close friends. Losses of jobs, medical diagnoses, calls from the consulate regarding a certain family members ability to get a visa, court dates, project deadlines, last minute school arrangements… It was an awful lot. I’d say I need a vacation, but that doesn’t help a whole lot these days either. The pandemic has made things so much more challenging across the board.

Long, deep, soulful sigh ~ insert here.

I’m back at the keys and clacking away. I’ve got a deadline tomorrow that I can’t miss for work and a deadline I can’t miss tomorrow for the kiddo. Work should be easy. Writing an essay about what I’ve learned as a parent as part of my daughter’s journey in martial arts? That’s going to be a challenge.