I have elevated laziness to an art form.
Since the beginning of the month I’ve managed to write a sum total of 394 words in my novel. I’m at the point in the story when things really are starting to get interesting between my two main characters, but there’s still a lot of gaps in the back story and in the story progression, so I’m finding that the scenes I want to write aren’t the scenes that need to be there. Sure, the wanted ones are getting jotted down in a separate document for future use (if at all, depending on how things go), but the actual word count in the novel has only crept up by about two pages in three weeks.
So, instead of actually sitting in front of the computer stewing about what I need to do next (‘cause I have no idea – my characters aren’t talking to me right now. Something about who has more page time, and I’m just not getting into that argument.), I’ve been avoiding the issue all together. I’m watching Farscape on DVD (what an amazing show – way ahead of the curve and too bad more people didn’t appreciate that), playing with new card weaving patterns, reading, writing my column at Examiner.com and sleeping. Lots of sleeping. As in 10-12 hours a day of sleeping. You’d think I was a teenager all over again.
Some might argue that excessive sleeping is just part of being a depressive, and that might be true, as the urge to hide from the big bad world has been increasing exponentially. It doesn’t help that the SoCal summer has finally officially hit, with temperatures hovering around 100 degrees and the unwashed pollutant-filled air causing me raging sinus headaches, or that I’ve been out of work for 18 months without so much as a single interview. It’s cool and dark in the bedroom, with a humidifier to help the sinuses and cats purring to ease the tension. Why would anybody want to leave?
Amidst all that sleeping is a lot of dreaming. Mostly round-filling, some anxiety purges, and the usual zombies and aliens. Maybe somewhere in there is the answer, if only because I can’t have all that going on in my head and not get anything out of it. I have noticed that the more I dream, the more I’m able to write, and the more fantastical I dream, the better my fiction writing seems to be. I suppose that probably shouldn’t be all that surprising, since it’s all coming out of the same head, but sometimes the doors aren’t all open. Every now and then you have to run down the hall and kick them in. Guess that’s what all the sleeping is about, the subconscious trying to get the necessary doors to crack so we can get on with things. Just as long as that big one at the end of the hall with the chains and locks on it doesn’t get opened, that is. That’s one nightmare monster that doesn’t need to get out again…
So here I am, avoiding the novel, wondering who’s going to make it through to the finals in America’s Got Talent, drooling over Ben Browder, playing with string and segregating my M&Ms before I eat them.
Man, I’m exhausted.
© 2010 Cheri K. Endsley. All Rights Reserved.
Musings of a Madwoman 