I called it the “zone.”

Enjoy 🫂

On a couple of occasions. After re reading a passage or paragraph and saying to myself…
“Damn that’s good.”
Then… after a quick high…
right back to self doubt and criticism.

It brings mental clarity. Work 18-20 hours a day with the rest sleep.

Wish I had the discipline to make things happen like that.

or do i write because i am manic?

Writing forces you to organize your thoughts and come up with clearer ways to express your ideas.

I keep a journal of my daily activity, and when you take the time to put these little unimportant things together and write them down, you gain new perspectives on what it all means.

And yes, it's exhilarating.

And was shocked to see it snowing outside.
I was frustrated because Winter just wouldn't go away and I was instantly inspired and wrote the finest poem I've ever written.
It was about winter refusing to let go and allow spring to arrive.
I lost it in a move a few years later and rue that day.
The words danced and flowed on that page, in reading it on open mic nights with the energy contained within, I knew it was special.

it just might turn up in unexpected places on a hard drive or cloud storage. I've had that happy accident happen to me.

The flow…

...but it doesn't happen often enough because I don't plant my ass in the chair regularly enough to turn on the faucet. But it is a wonderful feeling.

because, frankly I write on lunch and breaks at work, other chunks of interrupted time. It helps give the racing mind time to reflect until all the inspirations are complete. Then, if the book is fun enough, I merrily edit and re-edit and polish the ready to publish ms. Even running all those edits, like a new vacuum cleaner going over a "clean rug" is satisfying as craft. And yes, the nagging challenging books seem to write themselves, characters taking over, and resolutions just developing seemingly out of nowhere. I like the real satisfying ending. Sometimes the buzz stretches out over years, nothing like what a quick reader can ever experience.

It is truly a magical mind to be in. I envy you!

The loneliness of a long distance writer. It puts you on a sort of creative diet. I enjoy working with my fellow postal workers, the domestic life, writing and illustrating my "stuff." It is all ecstatic.

I have yet to experience that in my work. I would imagine sustained attention is key.
I have started systematically organising every part of my work starting with memory. I have identified poor retention skills going back to childhood as the reason behind the inferior quality of a lot of my work.

I post here these days in part to improve my non-work writing in a space where (unlike say one’s own phones or computers) the possibility of human eyes or machinic scripts is not unacceptable. Well actually it should even be expected. I use these more obscure forums as they get less traffic.

I have not yet given up on privacy or security. In fact just lately, I have started defaulting to assuming they are a given again rather than the opposite. I refuse to get broken into accepting a surveillance state. It is just too bad for work and health, politics aside. I like compartments that don’t blur and sane rules.

I have also finally stumbled upon a way to retain memories with a little digital help that should assist recall. Provided I can get it to work, it would improve the quality of my work. I found that aesthetics are surprisingly important.

I have been working on a paper for longer than I care to remember. But this time I didn’t set a hard deadline, choosing instead to focus on the process of getting it completed.