Messy Creativity

I find it reassuring to know that creativity is often messy.

I have the ability to clutter anything: my desk (er, desks); my spot at the kitchen table; my bedside stand; anywhere I plant myself to solve newspaper puzzles.

I created a workspace out of half of our den. The half away from the fireplace. The window half. I love the morning sunlight. And I have not one but three work surfaces.

The oldest is a drop-leaf desk. Years ago, I stripped thick white paint from it. It had been green before that. One of its small drawers holds the book my daughter wrote in second grade. I reserve that desk for making journal entries, and work on other than fiction writing.

The other desk I also stripped—down to its lovely oak— but it really needs a taller owner, being an inch higher that my other surfaces. Consequently, it acts as a catch-all. 

The table is where I really sprawl. Some mornings I have to excavate to locate my laptop. 

It’s always seemed to me I should be more orderly. After all, that’s what a librarian is. Orderly. Right?

I do try, The last time I acted to find a “home” for everything, I had to hunt and wrack my brain before remembering where I had put whatever I was searching for.

Right now, I’d dearly love to find the notes from a recent workshop I attended.

Projects

I’m supposed to be working on the final volume of my trilogy—and I am. But I didn’t want to let go of the work on a verse novel, which I resumed during my sci-fi break.

To do both seemed impossible. Bouncing back and forth between future and distant past. How to maintain the sense of two worlds?

Solution: More Desks

We have another room—called the “mail room” because that’s where the mail enters the house. (Yes, we’re lucky!)  It contains the computer desk. we used to share, back before laptops. It became my husband’s work space. But when his last laptop died, he declined to replace it. 

I really didn’t want to lose the momentum on the verse novel. Why not take that particular world to a separate room, to a separate desk, at a different, designated time of day?

The good news is it’s working. At least for the verse novel.

The bad news is I’m having trouble resolving sci-fi dilemmas created in the previous two volumes . . . 

You could call it a writer’s block. But I am thinking about it daily. . 

I just need to clear this workspace and maybe . . .