Searching for something you already have

Some days I go in search of inspiration. I eagerly click through my favourite blogs hoping that today’s post will have some magical content to reconnect me to my flagging muse.

Sometimes I find it; sometimes I find it somewhere unexpected. Unfortunately this is not usually the case and I don’t find what I’m looking for out there. I need to find it in here. Generally I am able to sit at the computer every morning and bang out a good 1000 words without waiting for the muse to find me. But every now and then I need reminding that I am able to do this.

I am at that point today…searching. Sitting in my day job office I can hear a piano in the distance, a busker somewhere in the city playing. It is beautiful, the parts that I can hear, but I’m not getting all of it. I am straining through the noise of the traffic and shoppers, and the different pitches of the pedestrian walk. At times I can’t hear it at all and then several notes fight through the other noises to get to me. That is just enough for me to know that if I was to take a quiet few minutes I could possibly write something.

I did find a post about productivity – volume and output. Not just in words, but in the number of works. And it struck me that I may not be as productive as I could be. In fact I’m certain of it. I could be writing more often, I could be adding to my very poor list of finished works (currently at one) and increasing my chances of getting published. The more I write the better I get and so my chances improve.

If I am able to publish enough I can spend my whole day writing, not just thinking about writing. Then when I get home I’m generally too tired, time poor etc to write anything. Quite often I miss the window. I know I do. The house is quiet, the kids are settled and I think I could go now, I could get a lot done, but I wait and I potter with other things, and I watch just five more minutes of some rubbish on the box and then the window is closed and I couldn’t even if I wanted to. But if I had moved to the study the moment I had the thought then I would happily tap away at the keyboard lost in some wondrous world of my own making for an hour or two before it even occurred to me that I was too tired to be there.

For one of my courses I am currently between units, so I have a little less pressure this week. My aim it to spend the time that I was spending on study, on my writing instead.

Happy Scribbling