After interviewing a client yesterday, I realized I was going to have to completely rewrite a chapter from the giddyup. Boy, did I not want to do that. I went to bed early, despairing at the work ahead of me. But if there’s anything I hate more than doing stuff I don’t want to do, it’s thinking about how much I don’t want to do stuff I don’t want to do.
After all, the doing will only last so long, but the dark anticipation of doing it can go on a lot longer. That’s why I’m not a big procrastinator. It’s just worse that way. So, when I woke up at 5:30 in the morning, fretting and worrying and obsessing about this damn chapter, I just opened up the document and said, “Something is better than nothing.” Not out loud, but, you know.
I knew I’d feel better getting something on paper to work with. I started typing, adding just a detail here and a plot point there, and a minute later it was 10:30. I’d been working for five hours and, voilá, the chapter was nearly done, which really made me appreciate electricity.
I’m going somewhere with the electricity thing. See, I’ve been trying to outfit my little camping trailer for life on the road, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to get off-grid (solar) electricity to the degree that I could actually fall into a writing vortex like the one I just described. For about fifteen hundred bucks I can get enough solar power to juice up my laptop twice a day, as long as I’m in the desert, in full sun. Not good enough!
The gas generator thing is out. Who can work with all that noise? So I’m still trying to figure out how to take my show on the road, but just toying with these ideas has made me realize that even though I work alone, I’m deeply dependent on a huge infrastructure to keep my creativity flowing.
Were I working on a typewriter, I doubt I could keep clacking away for five hours straight without looking up. My work, the way I do it anyway, is directly dependent upon the technology and the infrastructure I’m connected to. Taking the writing vortex on the road is going to require quite a feat of engineering. So, stay tuned for technological advances!