The Neverending Problem of Being A Reader & A Writer

It sucks.

I hate living so vividly in my own head that sometimes I can't pull myself out of it in order to function in reality. A great example would be this morning when I drove 45 minutes to an appointment at 8 AM that was actually scheduled for 1 PM. Yeah. Oops.

Actually I take that back, I love living vividly in my own head. It's a glorious thing and a wonderful escape. What I dislike about it is when someone else's vision is crowding mine for space - because I'm a reader as well as a writer.

Normally I try not to read fiction at all while I'm writing in order to avoid what I call voice bleeding -accidentally grafting the voice of your read onto your ms - but this week as I recover from eye surgery, I thought it might be safe to read a little with my one good eye and let my own story just stew a bit.

Kind of a mistake. I picked up an ARC of Rosamund Hodge's CRUEL BEAUTY and now it's living in my head, taking up the space that is supposed to be reserved for my WIP. If you follow my Twitter stream you know that my reading lamp went out the other night and I didn't have replacement bulbs, but I wasn't done reading. 

So I put on my headlamp.

I'm sure somewhere there's someone who thinks a girl in surgery googles and a headlamp is attractive, and if you find him, let me know. I've got a great selfie for him.

How To Stop Women From Writing

I spent the weekend in West Virginia with my boyfriend's family for Thanksgiving. It was really lovely to sit down to eat food I didn't make, and be able to sit down and relax in a house I didn't feel responsible for cleaning.

And then I came home.

I have two indoor cats and two dogs. My mom was nice enough to let the dogs in and out while I was gone, but everybody was anxious at my absence and it was easily seen. At some point someone had clearly dug into the garbage can. There were little cat paw prints on the counter that could only be seen in a certain light, but I knew they were there. Judging by the defiant looks, I'm guessing the kitties knew I knew and didn't care. The laundry I was supposed to do last week was waiting on me, the dishes in the sink were still dirty, and I really needed to put fresh bedding on my bed.

But the drive home had given me a few hours of warm, fast-moving-cocoon, quiet time. And the little seed in my brain that wants to become the WIP germinated in those few hours, sprouting supporting characters and ripping off a series of things I need to research if I really want to do this project justice.

Seeing all that housework waiting on me the second I walked in the door was like a killing frost on that seedling, as effective as the 15 degrees outside. There were things staring at me in the real world that needed my attention. People notice when you let these things go.

But the only person that knows when you let things go in your imagination is you.

So I decided to be dutiful, and I started in on the dishes when I suddenly remembered a quote from Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write... and you know it's a funny thing about housecleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectabilty) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she "should" be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.

In MindyLand this translates as, "F#(*! the dishes. I'm writing."