Thinking

 I was thinking (yes, that's the title) about what is the most difficult part of being a writer at home. Interruptions? Yes. It's impossible to not be interrupted, but it would be the same in an office. Harder, probably. Possibly... well, no...probably not, really. 

Actually getting the work done when you're freelance and nobody is waiting for what you are writing. There are a million other things that need to be done first. Well, people are waiting occasionally, if it's a serial or, for instance, when My Weekly wanted me to write a Pocket Novel for Christmas and I had five weeks to write 50,000 words, plus the edit, because I had to finish my degree first. That wasn't funny. Tasha always reminds me of when I disappeared into a room, worked night and day, and re-emerged five weeks later. It didn't help that the editor decided she wanted to radically change a character halfway through, so I had to go back to the start and change a LOT.

But thinking. That's something else entirely. When you're hidden away in a corner of the house, staring into space, it's hard to convince someone that you're working. But without a great deal of thinking, it's very hard to write as there's nothing to write about. As Tasha mentioned in the first post, I have about a million tabs open, and a lot of these look crazily random: the history of the ironing board; when was bread first sliced commercially; definition of a daxie dog (is it specifically miniature dachshunds or dachshunds in general?).  These are all part of the 'thinking time'. Some come to nothing and some suddenly take shape and become something exciting. The feeling you get when you know something is going to work is like a high. I'm sure all of us feel that. Creating a new recipe, painting a landscape, probably tidying up the garden. My book arrived...The Creative Act: A Way of Being...and the first quote is by Robert Henri: The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

That's the best place to be.

But today's thinking is going to have to wait as Nikki needs a lift and someone from BorrowMyDoggy wants to meet at Mudford Rec at 2pm. 

Hey ho. 

'Tomorrow is another day.' I'm sure Scarlett O'Hara wasn't wrong:-)