Overcomeing Writer’s Block

My Muse Must be Magnanimous

27th Trial: Saying goodbye to a home that has become my Muse

Weekly hours spent writing or in the pursuit of plot: 1 Hour (in total since last post)

Weekly Choice of Tea: Christmas Blend

Biggest Success: Eating authentic Austrian Macaroni and Cheese. Philip, my Austrian connection and the one that helped Jamie and I out when she fell off the cliff side, full-filled his promise to make us macaroni and cheese using specific Austrian cheese. There. are. no. words.

It has been two weeks hence since I picked up my laptop to speak again to you all, and I beg that you forgive such absent-mindedness. Over the past two weeks I have been re-packing, selling with vehemence, and planning. Not to mention doing all of this and keeping the Christmas spirit alive! Luckily for me I am back on the couch you saw in the earlier post, sitting peacefully next to the fireplace. This week will be my last week working for a while, until I move to California and begin practicing there. Yes, you heard correctly! I will be leaving my dear Charlotte–a place that has given my novel its voice and its setting. I can only hope that my Muse will morph into the trees and oceans that meet me on my upcoming journey, and does not create a yearning within that dries one’s quill or locks prose in corners I cannot reach.

What is a Muse to me, then, if it be ever changing? Charlotte, and more specifically Noda, has given me song and inspiration as of late. And when I am in California, can She become the seals by the chilling waves of the Pacific? The sweet temperament of sun’s rays on endless coastal highways? Will she be spiteful towards me, for forcing change and inconsistency? My muse must be magnanimous, and without solid shape. A Boggart of sorts!

Do I look forward to this change, this immediate lack of work? Can idleness and inactivity give me any rest or repose? I will make a promise to this blog and to myself:  let anytime away from one passion allow another passion to thrive. Over the next month and a half I will be dedicated to my novel, and will dazzle you surely with witty sense and breath-taking revelations. Surely, I will!

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A Room of Her Own

26th Trial: One must escape to create–I pull from Virginia Woolf’s quote a useful writing tip.

Weekly hours spent writing or in the pursuit of plot: 4 Hours

Weekly Choice of Tea: Sweet Macha

Biggest Success: Embracing the life of Carol K. (Grandma Perin)

 

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” -Woolf

I am not unappreciative of where Jamie and I live now, though the windows are painted shut and spots of possible mold intersperse the ceiling like a lethal starry night. The age of the Havisham-house is thick in the air, and Jamie and I share space with each other, our lovely dog, and a roommate of spectacular artist talent!  This is his home, and his space to work on his art. Where, among the dust and walls with ten-layers of paint, could my own personal creativity flourish? I attempt the impossible. I bite the bullet and sit down at the small desk in the corner of our small room, and write. I look at it with disgust typically, and my pen is useless within a half and hour. The attitude of my surroundings is not conducive! I have tried! Yet, tried in vain.

For me to have a successful time writing, I must scoop out $5 and go to a coffee shop in town. “Smelly Cat” is a room of my own, a space where I can focus and feel the juices flowing. I have found that not only a coffee shop makes a writer of me, as this week I house sat at a luxurious, clean, newly modeled home. I spent the majority of the evenings by the fireplace with Christmas music filling the background. I wrote an hour a night, gladly and progressively. What a relief! How simple the concept has become:   fill a space with the objective to calm you, soothe and caress your imagination, and give your mind the ability to think not on toxic fumes that leak from the walls, but instead on its limitless ability to create. The absolute cure for writer’s block as well! I constantly had Boo Radley’s toys or nose in my space where I read and wrote, and I found that there was plenty of room for her as well.

Boo and VilletteBoo Radley

I would like to end this post not with my acknowledgement of Woolf’s yet-again impeccable ability to hit the nail on the head, but with a tribute to a wonderful woman. Jamie described her grandmother as stubborn and unbending, and as Jamie laughed when she described such qualities, one comes to embrace them. Grandma Perin was a rock in Jamie’s heart, a kind and hilarious woman, who followed the Cleveland Cavaliers with the enthusiasm of a professional scout (of whom I believe she was in a past life). Her kids, her sports, and her home seemed to be her life. Today she passed peacefully, and Jamie and I are happy to think of where she could be now, of what adventures await her. Sending out love and hope to Grandma Perin!

Dumbledore: “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”

Peter Pan: “..to die would be an awfully big adventure.”