#11: Five-at-a-Time

I thought I'd do a better job of updating this blog. But I have not. And so here we are.

I've been playing the What-Now game since September. It's kind of like throwing a poorly crafted paper airplane.

The nice thing about recording was that there were schedules and other people and other people's schedules. Deadlines. I had deadlines. And they weren't arbitrarily set and monitored by me. It wasn't me saying to me, "Ok, Little P. You're going to have Such and Such done by Blee Bloop date." That never works. Ever. If I am my only disciplinarian, things won't get done. I am very lenient.

Because of dates when actual things actually happened with the recording, I had clear deadlines for the book. And those deadlines hinged on more than just me frowny-facing into the mirror.

Now, nothing is hanging over my head.

I'd love to record again. And once the funds are replenished, perhaps I will. Replenishing funds is a real sticky wicket. So I thought I'd go ahead and finish a writing project in the meantime.

I have an embarrassing number of unfinished writing projects in a badly organized folder on my laptop. The folder is called "WRITING," and when I open it, I get dizzy. I'm not talking about single paragraphs and little bits and clips of ideas (although, I have those, too). I mean, full-blown drafts waiting for resolutions and rewrites.

3 novels.

A bajillion blog entires waiting to be turned into essays.

And countless "Whatevers."

And somewhere in the hungry beast that is my desk is a disk with at least 2 more novels and however many more essays pulled off my old laptop.

Nothing makes my unfulfilled potential more obvious than my WRITING folder.

I hope none of this comes across as... I don't know... whatever. It's mostly just exasperating. I don't understand how my own head works.

You know what it is? It's seepage. I have constant seepage. My head leaks. It isn't orderly. Songs don't come out one-at-a-time. They come out five-at-a-time. My job is to herd them. Stories, too. I get one draft written just in time for another to start pushing out, and then I'm too distinterested or too overwhelmed or too ________ to go back and clean up the first one. Or, more likely, the second story starts pushing out before I ever even get through with the first.

And then there are thirds and fourths.

In music, I have a hard time working in covers. For several months now, LEARN NEW COVERS has been on my to-do list. I'm bored with the ones I play. But I have a really hard time learning covers. One, because I just have a hard time figuring out what others are doing, period. But also, because when I sit down to figure out a cover song, I end up stumbling onto something I think sounds cool, and then instead of learning the cover, I want to write something new.

When creative sorts talk about dry spells... I don't have much in the way of drought. I have the opposite problem. It's monsoon season all the time. That's not a boast. Too much is no better than too little. Drought or monsoon--either way, the crops don't grow.

So if anyone is wondering what I've been up to since September, that is it: Herding songs; Sifting aimlessly through unfulfilled potential; Tending a drowned bean field; Playing What-Now; and Trying to sell this project so I can record again.