Always back to the writing

I woke early this morning without having gotten much sleep (par for the course on Sunday nights, who knows why?), had a nine a.m. appointment, then came home and relaxed for a bit with my dog on the patio.

I took my fiction notebook with me, since a snippet of self-revealing dialogue from my hero has been running around in my brain and I thought I'd try to capture it. It's one of those snippets that's too strong to be forgotten, the second scene in chapter 1, so I just let it go and relaxed.

Soon, I felt fully in the grip of a pity party. A couple of things have been weighing heavily on my mind recently, none of which are related to writing, but all of which have been gaining momentum as I shove them to the back of my brain and valiantly forge on through life. Wah, wah, wah, poor me. X is happening in this part of my life, Y already happened...yadda yadda. Don't tell me you don't have these moments (unless you're not human).

Since I spent almost three hours on Saturday in my first yoga class in six months (so, so good to be back in Hero's pose and scaring others with Lion's pose), I thought I'd do the proper Buddhist approach and sit with my feelings. I don't know if sitting=wallowing, but I did a bang-up job of it. I boo-hoo'ed and sniffled, whined and moaned (to myself, didn't want to scare the dog), did some creative visualization to rid myself of some of the crappier thoughts.

I finished with a bit of meditation, striving for that "blue sky mind" I like to get to when things get too fast or overwhelming to me. Now, I must admit that I love meditation and enjoy the challenge of it. I also tend to think I'm good at it (at which time I usually get snowed under by all kinds of stuff that gets in the way of blue-sky mind)--but not today. Instead of letting thoughts pass by like feathers on the wind, a lump of reality planted its round little butt in the middle of my meditation and refused to get up and leave.

Writing. In particular, two deadlines I have this week.

I tried pushing past, letting the thoughts go. I'm not concerned with the pieces--they're both pieces I'm passionate about. I've outlined one and finished the first draft of the second, and will most likely have them both done by the end of today or tomorrow, but my mind didn't want to hear any of that.

Writing. Ideas, thoughts, structure. Publishing, emotion, voice, character. Like little mice on the proverbial wheels, all of the elements of writing attacked my brain and started doing that little thing they always do when inside my mind: creating sparks and energy.

I fought the thoughts for a while, then relented. When I opened my eyes, I discovered that not only was my pity party a distant memory, but that I had a smile on my face and paragraphs assaulting me from every angle. I was refreshed and refocused, and all I had to do was lie in the lawn chair for a few minutes.

I have these "moments" (aka pity parties) now and then, and nothing ever seems to bring me back up out of the doldrums like writing. Of course, if you have any experience at all with writing yourself, you'll know implicitly that writing will send you to those doldrums, too, and sometimes keep pushing your head back down under the water, but eventually the pressure lessens, the creativity opens and the words flow. I can't explain it much more than that...it always comes back to the writing.

How about you? Do you ever feel like writing=life? How does writing affect you? I know I'm not the only one and am always curious to see how creativity manifests itself in the lives of others. Such an interesting topic...