I tried to be disciplined last night. After my run home, eating, activity displacement websites A through E and only some minor faffage I sat down with Scrivener to show it who’s the daddy. I even stopped listening to the football broadcast and listened to opera instead (anxious italian shouting seems to suit my writing habits — make of that what you will).
And some good was achieved, but it was a bit of a poor effort. I gave up and went to bed early.
And then, hours later, having slept a while and exhausted my nervous fidgeting about life, the universe and blog posts I really should write while at work (‘Should one edit the tags of the CEO’s blog?’) — the feted hour arrived — historically this has been a little before 4am — and great big swathes of script arrived fully formed in my head.
This happens a lot. I need to let the script ‘download’ from the ether — I never know how much or how little there will be. There’s no point waking myself up to write any of it down — I tend to be so tired that my doctor’s scrawl becomes a dentist’s. And there’s no point trying to type it, because somehow typing tries to impose some kind of order, and there is rarely order to this stream of consciousness stuff.
I’m always convinced that the words are flowing like a river, and that it ‘arrives’ fully formed. Which is probably down to reading too many Phil K Dick biographies when I was younger. But also needs comparing to the dream a couple of days ago when I thought I was remembering the plot for No Country for Old Men verbatim and then realised I was ‘remembering’ some kind of survival horror nonsense.
So now, thanks in part to Brain Training on the DS, I try to fix on keywords and rebuild it from there later. And the keywords du jour are ‘Steve Jackson’s Fighting Fantasy’, ‘A nice cup of tea and a sit down’, ‘OCD’, ‘Guilty wishes’, ‘prison service’ and ‘Belinda’.
I can’t 100% remember the trigger point, but it’s something to do with Chapter 4. I think. It might be about seagulls and cinammon danish, but that doesn’t quite fit.
Hmm. Sigh. And I guess if it’s not strictly on the page it doesn’t count — right? It’s all kicking off though, Marjorie.
