One piece of writing advice has always stayed with me. Use everything. Grief? Don’t waste it. Fury? Desperation? All our moods and experiences serve us well when we mine them for our work.
I didn’t get much work done last week. Appointments occupied the first three days. On Wednesday I drove home through a wind storm, arriving to find the garage door wouldn’t open. The power was out.
For nine hours, the power was out. At 11:30 pm, I got up to turn off the odd light and blow out the odd candle. I got back into bed only to realize I hadn’t closed the fireplace damper. Up again. An exceedingly unrestful night ensued.
I got up grumpy.
In the morning I went to my laptop for my most pleasurable pursuit—playing around with turning prose into verse, in this case, a tale with three points of view.
My grumpy mood turned out to be the ideal state of mind when dealing with the story’s “villainess.” That cheered me up.
Actually, I’ll probably leave the manuscript in prose, but even experimenting with verse can enrich the end product.
Unfortunately, that was the only writing I did. Fatigue cost me most of that day and the next.
The saga continues into this week. A second wind storm took out our power on Sunday, this time for 22 hours. But that’s another story.
“No lights? No internet? No heat? Take a nap. Just don’t forget to feed me.”
Kate Harrington 