What I’ve Been Doing …
Well, the “Is Epic Fantasy Misogynist?” 3-parter took a bit of effort, but in fact I only put that together in the late evenings after my working day on the Great Revision (aka the GR) was done. I had a bit of a slow start on the GR this week because of a special visitor who had come a ‘fur piece’ (to quote Faulkner) and therefore merited a modicum of hostly courtesy. (Possibly a misguided ethic on my part but one I don’t plan to abandon anytime soon, the laws of hospitality having contributed—in my view—to holding humanity to the ‘humane’ part of that word for several odd millenia now.)
But once I waved my visitor good-bye early in the week it was all on for the GR. The beginning was slow because I was getting into a new section and had to kind of ‘feel’ my way forward waiting for the lights to come on, but they have now come on with a vengeance and things are rocking along. I do so love it when that happens.
And that’s pretty much me for the week: the GR; the epic fantasy posts; a Tuesday Poem: Yeats’ The Lake Isle at Innisfree, being my Mum’s favourite—because it was Mother’s day last Sunday, of course.
I did reprise the post about Morning Pages—as part of my revision (and general writing) process—on Monday as well. And I have to say, the pages have really helped me stay on the straight and narrow this week: waking up every morning and having the pages to work out/reveal to me: “yup, this is how the revising needs to go today.” And then I go to the computer and ‘make it so.’ D’you know what else—da pages are never wrong.
It must be that the pages just trigger something in your head, your sub-conscious that gets the problems out of the way!
I definitely think the ‘stream-of-consciousness/don’t-lift-the-pen-from-the-page’ process of writing morning pages is all about bringing relevant material out of the subconscious and into the concious mind. One that works for me, but may not for everyone given we’re all different and access our creativity in different ways.