And here we go with another episode of Bitch-space. Today, I’m. going to wave my hands, do a little hocus-pocus and attempt to dazzle myself with 15 minutes of creative writing, in the same mode as this. Look, Ma! No hands!
Except it’s all going to be hands, or rather fingers, on the keyboard. Anyways. Maybe I should say “Look Ma! No thoughts!” or “No inner bitch!”. That last one would be grand.
No.
Inner.
Bitch.
And holy shit, I never cease to be impressed by how well I’m touching typing at the moment (she types, as she makes two glaring typos and has to look down at the keyboard to make sure her hands are in the right place. It’s the way it goes thought, the moment you think about something too much is the moment it all goes to shit. Much like the creative writing that I want to do next.
And holy fuck, how do I keep writing random things and bringing them back to the point I started out with? Is that not genius? Is that not the creative voice flexing its awesome muscles, knowing I have a purpose here and doing it’s best to keep me on track? Is that not a sign that I should trust the inner two-year-old a whole hell of a lot more than I do, rather than overthinking things with my over-thinking front brain? I think it is. I think it’s just the point that I needed to make to myself about this whole mess/endeavour.
Fucked if I can spell “endeavour” (but hey, I just did. Twice. Go me.)
Anyways… Now that I’ve done all that (in under 5 minutes no less) what the fuck am I going to write for the rest of my/this time? I know, let’s bring this around to the saggy fucking middle that always trips me up, because hey, ain’t this a saggy fucking middle?
So, how do we keep going when we hit the saggy middle? What is the problem with the saggy middle?
I like how I wrote it in Cold Between Stars, that whole bit about Kuma unleashing his psionic abilities to sense the crew. It was a rush, a heady, swooping, giddy rush that then slowed to a trickle, becoming difficult the further out he had to go. That’s what the start and the middle of a story are.
The start is the heady rush where the ideas come and you’re not worrying about the words, you just want to get the story down, or rather, the things in your brain, the initial images/scenes. The middle is the hard bit, after the giddiness has past and you’re left with the… I don’t know what to call it. It’s a calm, a space where the energy has petered out, been spent on the start, and now you have to sit there and wonder… What’s next?
The “what’s next” is where the inner bitch critic comes in, digs its manicured talons into your brain and drags out the doubt, the fear, the shitty bad stuff that does nothing except get in my fucking way. So… How to conquer the calm, the inertia? ‘Cause that’s what it is, inertia, and if I was letting myself go back and edit this shit as I wrote, I’d change the description, but I’m not, and so I won’t. Just live with it.
Inertia, how do we deal with the inertia? What strategies/tactics come I implement? Need more than one. This is a pretty good tactic, the type type type, but how well will it work with the creative stuff? How do I use it to get past the blank moments, the times when no words, no images are in my brain? How does that work?
I hesitate to write “how can that work?” because that is defeatist, doesn’t jive with the whole point of Bitch-space, even though those are the words that went through my brain. No, I will not be defeated, I will not give in to the bitch. It is possible for type type type to work, I just have to practice. Practice practice practice the same way I type type type.
That’s what DWS’s advice about “just write the next line” is all about. Write the next line, don’t stop, keep going, make shit up and trust that the inner two-year-old knows what she’s doing. She’d telling a good story and she’s going to take the shit in your no-longer-but-okay-maybe saggy middle, the stuff you didn’t know what you were doing with, and she’d going to turn it into genius. She’s going to show you the way.
The way of the two-year-old, the way of the Mandalorian. Somehow, I gotta put that on a mug. Maybe a t-shirt?
So. Game plan. We’re going to type type type some creative shit next. I don’t know what it’s gonna be, I don’t care. It’s gonna be creative, it’s gonna be cool, it’s gonna be something the two-year-old turns into a fucking work of art. Maybe not now, maybe not next week or next month, but she’d gonna tan that sow’s ear and come out with a purse.
Trust the process.
Trust the two-year-old.
Yee-hah.
Featured image courtesy of Remy_Loz via Unsplash