Thursday, April 02, 2015

Yesterday's Tapes, Tomorrow's Stories

Arg.  I've been wanting to write, and write mindfully, and practice, and this has been the last few days where that doesn't happen.  Dion Fortune was right:  when you try to accomplish a spiritual goal, a zillion distractions rise up to bar your way.

Working out:   Monday was a Work Day from Hell, and I got home late, so I went to the gym Monday night.  I did about 150 calories on the rowing machine in about fifteen minutes.  I've managed to reach a cruising point of about 720 cal / hour which feels good.  I did some extra free-weight things.

Writing:  Tuesday, someone asked me about Arcosanti, and the next thing I knew, I was reliving a particularly obnoxious moment.  I apologized for stepping onto a soapbox and we joked about Capricorns never forgetting, and she said she was a Cancer and that Cancers feel people's emotions, and I said, "Oh Capricorns feel things, too; we just don't let anyone see."  And I joked about how I should have a circle of friends, and we'd light candles, and I'd mime returning various strings to pictuers of some people from my past, and I'd say things like, "This is the string of anger that ties me to the past, and I return it to you."  

So.  Here I am Wednesday morning, writing, and focusing on writing.  But I sometimes play tapes in my head, and I'm thinking that one way to put the tapes away so I can focus on today and where I am may be to use a version of the tapes as character motivation.  Hmmm.   That  leads to the question of just how close to get to writing as therapy.  But then again, on the other hand, I read about published authors who have had terrible years and written from that place.  Anyway, Tuesday's particular tape has given me a story idea I want to work with.

Working out:  Wednesday was another day where the afternoon was spent dealing with Other Things and writing.  So I went to the gym in the evening.  I managed 200 calories in 17 minutes, followed by some weights-on-string lunges, lat pull-downs, triceps curls, power-station curl-ups, some dumbbell curls, and some other free-weight work.  

Writing:  I'm  working from some hard-copy of a rough draft of a 6000 word fairy-tale re-working.  Forster's aspect of Plot is rearing its head, and I can see that I need to show the Princess's emotional reactions much more than I am now.  On a story "and-then" level, the manuscript mostly works, but the plot "why" is weak.  I can see how the Princess's dialog in one section needs to be returned to match the Elizabethan style she used in the first quarter.  And as I was working out, my rowing machine guided fantasy of the Moon Priest in a Boat Prow turned a little bit into imagining the Princess getting out of her dilemma.  

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