Some people call it ‘procrastination’ … I like to think of it as ‘contemplation’ .
So, as I sit here in my pyjamas (the ones with the feet in them), eating my yoghurt and kiwi fruit, slurping down the vanilla coffee, I am staring out the window of the study here at the ramshackle cottage. I am staring straight at the giant jacaranda tree – yes, the very same one that inpsired The Jacaranda Wife – and I’m thinking: “Surely, there’s another story in that damned tree.”
But alas, the tree is not playing nice … it’s just sitting there, dripping with lots of the rainy-rain that’s been falling, looking a little bedraggled.
Thus, I must look elsewhere for inspiration. I found this on a friend’s FB: “One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment.” (Hart Crane). Well, yes, that helps. Just let me go and fill the bathtub with words – a word bubblebath. Mmmm, impractical – or as one of my friends has often said of my theories “Mmmm, interesting but ultimately harebrained. ”
So, another coffee. Perhaps get into some grownup clothes and brush my hair. Start with a flense of a story for Jasoni. Then onto Tin Soldier, I think. More coffee. And I’ve worked out a way to fix Ingrid Lives in the Forest. Perhaps I can even begin the process of stretching Brisneyland by Night into a novella. There is also the next, uber-secret New Ceres project with DF and TRR. Ooops, I hope I didn’t say that out loud. And the collaboration with Brain Lisa. And the novel, Well of Souls (Sibylla is about to enter the book). It’s not as if there’s nothing to do. It’s about selecting the next thing to do.
Thus begins my writing Friday.