Plotting along

I’ve been rather quiet online lately. I’m shocked to realize that it’s been over a month since my last posting.

A lifetime spent writing has made me very effective at what the psychiatrists call compartmentalization. I can ignore a hundred looming tasks and crises while I focus on one project. That might make it possible for me to simultaneously work in diverse areas, but once in awhile I’m sucked in by the project and it’s all I can do to focus on that as well as my regular work.

One of these times is when I’m plotting a new story. When all of the elements of a story are swirling about, and I’m trying to catch the dangling threads and weave them together, it doesn’t leave much brain space.

I don’t even read things that I would normally consider reading. None of my reading is for pleasure; I don’t even glance at the fiction reading pile.

Lately it’s been in-depth histories of the 1890s and ethnographical studies of a particular aboriginal group. Seriously. I’ve been lying awake at night, utterly absorbed in books with chapter titles like, “Traditional Conservation and Harvesting Strategies.” If I did stop to write a blog entry, it wouldn’t be something that many people wanted to see.

I think I’m over it now. I have a neat outline—perhaps not finished, but at least to the tinkering stage—and I have my life back. Now, what were we talking about?

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Bruce Wishart
Whimsies. Sometimes about writing.
Sometimes about folklore. Sometimes
about the sea, or life on the coast.
And sometimes not.