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| My trademark self-portrait. Note that I have two things in hand at once. |
Last Monday, I
finally emerged from my cave and began to feel sane again.
I had spent the
previous week trying to work exclusively on one project. I had a deadline to
write a synopsis of my current novel-in-progress, which was complicated by the
fact that I still hadn’t quite figured how I was going to work everything out
in the end.
So, I gave myself
completely to getting it done. All my free time, all my mental energy, went
into the pounding, grinding, hair-pulling, eye-rolling, excruciating task of
coming up with a story worth reading. All lesser concerns were pushed aside. If
I took something out of a drawer, it got tossed to the side. Clean clothes
piled up on the end of my bed, looking dejected. I didn’t cut my nails. Purses
were dropped in corners. Papers lay in haphazard piles. I snapped and grumbled
at family members who dared interrupt me. If I had to be away from the novel
for a while, I was still thinking about it, running the possibilities through
my head, testing scenarios. My brain ached. One time, when I woke up at
midnight for no apparent reason, I powered up my laptop and did a few more
hours of work. Small wonder I felt a bit like the undead the next morning.
So, that was Crunch
Week.
Interestingly enough,
it was on the one day I rested from my work (because I believe in the principle
of taking a Sabbath), that I had some of the best ideas come together in my
mind. I emerged from the ordeal of Crunch Week with one thought: “I’m so glad that’s over!” I felt wretched, my room looked
like the aftermath of a small tornado, and, oh yeah…I didn’t even make the
deadline.
I finished the
synopsis this week at a more relaxed and happy pace.
The good parts of
Crunch Week were:
1. I never had to
wonder what I should be doing. I didn’t waste any time lapsing into daydreams while considering the
twenty different projects around me.
2. I did make some significant accomplishments. This novel has been my love/hate project
for the last, what—six years? So, to FINALLY have a DECISIVE version of the
plot is a huge relief.
3. My normal
lifestyle feels so sweet now.
I have to conclude
that I have a scattered mind and I like it that way. I seem to function best in
multi-project mode—if I have several plates spinning, I feel more alert,
competent…and it’s just plain fun. If I overdo it and start dropping plates, a
day or two of intense focus on doing just one thing ’til it’s done can be
helpful, but a whole week makes my mental machinery start to overheat, the
gears screeching and smoking. I like having the freedom to go from wielding a
paintbrush, to typing out a suspenseful scene, to sketching a few humorous
pages for a sometime-in-the-future graphic novel, to making a get-well card—all
in the same day. It can be a chaotic and exasperating life sometimes, but that’s
the point: it feels like life. Not like being a
growling zombie fortified in her woman-cave.
Maybe I should do a
Crunch Week once or twice a year—just to remind me why I like being
scatterbrained.
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