Here by Glimpses Known

 

Little man of the house-down-the-street, out checking to see if the laundry had dried. I could have told him the answer was no, not with the big rain that had ended not a half hour before.

Perhaps I shall do a "what I'll miss about Mayotte" post soon, and if I do, I can assure you that poorly-dried laundry, smelling forever of mold, will not be on it.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.~~Mark Twain.

Hmmm, who's going to tell that to the poor boy? Shall I?

Have I angered some writing god somewhere?

I tend to think of my particularly hardy brand of stubbornness and stick-with-it-ness as a good thing, but the constant need to chuck out and rewrite thousands of words is starting to get old. Especially when I know that it could probably have been avoided if I had only taken a moment to lift my head out of the wordy muck and breathe.

Not only am I stubborn, I am lazy, and therein lies the true problem. I'm too lazy to stop and rework my scene list. Too lazy to ask myself some basic questions about character, about need, about goals and vision.

One of these days I'm going to learn that it actually facilitates my laziness to do a bit of groundwork before slaving over words that will only have to be rewritten. Obviously that day hasn't happend yet. Or rather, I guess it has, just now.

So, I shall, from here on out, hold this kernel of truth tightly to my breast and do my utmost to stop and look around me from time to time, especially when I'm struggling with the sense that not all is well in my little writer's head. Yes, I shall...right up until that angry god makes me forget, yet again, my hard won lesson.