Thoughtful on Tuesday

No progress on the messy business with solicitors and wills; possible progress on the somewhere-to-live front (I’m going to look at a place in Turnham Green after work tonight); steady progress on the typing up of “Ramundi’s Sisters”. I’ve also been back to the new piece (must give this a working title – GY is an abbreviation of “The Eternal Love of Gabriel Yeats”, so why don’t I follow the same principle and call The New Piece “Fortitude”? Okay, that’ll do for now) – I’ve been back to “Fortitude” and tidied up some typing errors, and I think I see how it goes on from where it got stuck. I had a brainwave relating to another story this morning while walking to the bus stop, so am now wanting to get going on that. And I’ve restarted another piece, which had been started and abandoned twice before, when I suddenly realised it would work better as a first person narrative.

Good grief. It’s a bit scary; I’m typing up “Ramundi’s Sisters” and working on two other written projects, and contemplating starting on a third, all at the same time. Will this work, or will my brain collapse under the strain? Watch this space!

It’s odd how it comes and goes like this, in phases. I feel at the moment a bit as if I’ve opened a door and found a lot of things crammed in behind it, squeezed together to the point of severe compression; suddenly there’s space to expand into, and everything comes bursting out. My problem is to keep up with the onrushing flow of ideas coming through this door (sorry, slightly odd mixed metaphor there) while still holding down my job, having some sort of social life, etc. I have a ballet ticket this week, and two evenings I’m meeting friends for a drink, and tonight I’m going to look at some prospective digs, and I do want to do all of these things. But I want to be sitting down at my cranky little old laptop, writing, too. Because when it’s going, and it’s flowing, like this, there really is no feeling as good as this. Creative work is more precious and more exciting to me than almost anything else I’ve ever done; better than getting drunk, better (just) than swimming in the Mediterranean, better even than being in love… Admittedly being in love is the route into all sorts of agonies (or it always has been, for me, at any rate, largely because I am a complete idiot in love). Doing creative work is pure, consistent bliss. If only the aftermath weren’t sometimes such torture…