Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Disjointed Thinking

The fodder for stories comes from a lot of very strange places. I've been inspired by music, art, things I've read on the internet, and even a man walking his dogs down the street. I relish that ability to draw new ideas from everything around me, but at the same time it can also be an inconvenience.

I tend to forget some basic things of life when a story is determined to come out. Things like eating. Which is great when you're trying to lose weight, but not very healthy, and it isn't good if you're supposed to be feeding a family as well. I find myself distracted and unfocused as stories bounce around in my head. Partially because some of the things I'm being bombarded with are only pieces of stories or characters, but they're very important, at least at the time.

I'm not a very organized person naturally, so trying to manage my family, household, and writing can be quite a challenge under the best of circumstances. It becomes near impossible when the ideas are spewing forth at a rapid pace. I've tried to 'schedule' a writing time, and I do that, but the ideas and characters don't always abide by that clock. In fact, they rarely do. This can make things a little disjointed when dealing with the people who live with me.

I've noticed lately that my family regularly seem to be looking at me like I'm either crazy, out-to-lunch, or maybe a little slow. I get asked some pretty easy questions from the men in my life. Things like "What's for dinner?" and my reaction of late has been to sort of look up at them with a blank look. A look you might imagine someone having who was asked "How do you describe quantum mechanics?". At which point I tend to say, "I don't know. I'll let you know." Their responses have been annoyed or amused, depending on how much past the dinner hour it is already.

Now, if I was actually sitting at a computer typing my blank look would be more understandable from their point of view, and sometimes I am, but this past week has involved a lot of last minute planning for our vacation to Florida. So I've been in the kitchen or out in the yard or maybe even sorting laundry and they get that response. It seems perfectly natural to me, after all, my mind is so busy with events, details, conversations, settings, etc that when they come out of nowhere, like say the living room, and ask me about something as mundane as dinner, I'm a little confused. One night I almost said "cocktails and caviar" because my characters were currently having that. For the record, I've never even had caviar and it isn't likely to find its way into my house, not that I have anything against it, after all, some of my characters enjoy it quite a bit.

I hope things improve when my three sons all return to school next month, but in the meantime, I'm sticking with the excuse that I'm blonde. Yeah, that sounds good.

3 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

I often walk around the house distracted when a story is burbling in my brain. But I don't forget to eat.

A man's got to prioritize.

BernardL said...

It's annoying when real life intrudes on fiction. :)

Virginia Lady said...

That seems to be my family's position. Charles. Food must be a priority, particularly when it is their food.

I agree 100%, Bernard. Don't these people understand I'm busy being a creative genius? ;-)