Flotsam

It’s been raining in Brisbane for the last few days, but it appears that the rain has finally given up and sunlight is starting to peek through again. This makes me rather melancholy; I was rather enjoying the rain and the cold snap and watching the bands of grey cloud overhead while taking my afternoon stroll around the block.

The best part about the rain has been walking the path alongside our local drainage ditch, where the grass is the kind of green I’d forgotten grass could be and the drainage ditch actually does an impressive job of seeming like a stream.

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So I wrote a few things last night. Mostly the fifth installment of the Flotsam series, which was overdue and then overdue again on the date I said I’d have it sent through after emailing the editor and letting her know it’d be overdue. Afterwards I did a couple of hundred words on some new things. Flotsam 6, for example, and the beginnings of two other stories. Then I ate leftover pizza, again, and swore that I will find some other food to serve as the I-have-a-deadline-and-no-time-to-cook standby.

I am heartily sick of pizza right now. There’s a grocery list in my wallet, full of things which will be used to make tastier, healthier meals. Bowls of chili and spicy tomato soups and plates of Moroccan chicken with couscous, which is one of those meals I make primarily because couscous is an awesome word to say aloud.

Alas, these things must wait until tomorrow, when the payday comes around and the grocery shopping actually happens.

And at least there will be writing, regardless, and I will watch my nascent little stories grow in ambition and word-count. Then I will proof my Daily SF story, which has just arrived in my inbox for proofing-type things.

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Occasionally, when I lament the wasted time that occurs in my dreaded dayjob, people will ask me why I don’t sneak in a little extra writing time. This is a remarkably hard question to answer with any satisfaction, but it largely comes down to this: there is nothing sneaky about my writing process.

When I’m at my most subtle, writing still consists of talking to myself and sighing a lot and staring at the ceiling trying to picture what happens next. This is something of a rarity, reserved for those instances where I write in public, for when writing alone in my house the act of writing is considerably more physical.

I pace from room to room, pondering things. I re-enact scenes, complete with conversations that are spoken aloud. Often I will find myself dancing for plot, which is less euphemistic than it sounds since it largely involves actual dancing, assuming dancing is the correct verb for the peculiar bopping and flailing that happens when I’m alone in my apartment.

I suspect I pull funny faces too, although I’ve never written in front of a mirror to check this. But there is nothing subtle or sneaky about writing fiction, so it’s never something I’ll sneak in at the dreaded dayjob. If I tried, someone would inevitably notice, and I suspect my dreaded dayjob wouldn’t be a dayjob for much longer.

Which would be fine by me if writing paid my rent, but thus far, writing does not.