Simplicity by Sunny

As a minimalist, die-hard such as I am, I firmly believe in the beauty of focus.  A focus on one thing, squeezing every delicious moment from the experience.  Or if it’s a dreaded work task, focusing hard so that it’s over and done with as quickly as possible.

It was with great gusto, then, that I laser beamed all effort into the manuscript I intend to finish this summer.

I set my stage perfectly.

“Laptop?” Check.  “Lucky earrings?”  Check.  ”Booze?”  Of course!  Since it was before noon during this particular checklist, at my side was coffee… smothered in Bailey’s.

What more could an aspiring writer require?  Exactly!  So I rectified my lack of music by popping in ear buds.  How can you drink Bailey’s and not listen to Ella Fitzgerald?

I often write at a bohemian cafe downtown, a cozy little spot where everyone sports dreadlocks and calls you “dear sister” or “fellow brother”.  It’s really not as creepy as it sounds, but it does require an open mind .  The first 50 pages of my manuscript were constructed on its sidewalk patio.  And it was there, too, that my fingers stopped their ratta-tat-tatting on my keyboard.

“Uh oh,” I whispered to myself, leaning slowly away from my laptop.  “I’m stuck.”

The story’s details weren’t matching up, its plot becoming less and less plausible with each page.  Because I was in public during this revelation, I couldn’t cry about it.  Tears or not, my heart ached with overwhelm.  How could my manuscript be so disrespectful?

A week passed that I didn’t touch my story.  It had spurned me and I’m stubborn about such behavior.  Especially from stories and characters I’ve extended such excellent good will towards.  After being spurned, or feeling in any other way morose, I yearn for the mountains.  So last week Eddie (my car) and I drove ourselves into the Rockies.  During the drive, mind wandering, hair tangling up with the wind, a miraculous event occurred. 

The entire plot of my manuscript fell from the sky and dropped, like magic, into my brain. 

With a gasp, I yanked the wheel and pulled Eddie off the road.  His tires screeched.  Dust blew up.  “Pen! Pen!”  I chanted with excitement.  “Need pen!”  As the dust settled, my foot still heavy on the brake pedal, I scribbled words and names and places.  I drew arrows here and there.  I chewed my lower lip as it spread wide into a grin.  And when I was done, I shifted into park.  I twisted the stereo dial and sent Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” pouring out the windows.  I hopped out and danced around my car.  “Yippee!”  I shouted.  And when Steppenwolf was done, and my dance was over, I slumped against the bumper.

“Now,” I said to myself.  “If I could figure out the plot to the manuscript I’m actually writing, that’d be great.”

See, the plot that had dropped magically from the sky pertained to a story I’d started, but never finished, a year ago.  Though I should’ve been focusing on Manuscript #1, I became obsessed by Manuscript #2.  That afternoon, instead of heading further into the mountains, I swung around and raced to the nearest cafe.  I scribbled for hours, consuming enough cappuccino that I switched to Type C blood.  My scribbling produced the best outline of my entire life.  I still can’t believe how marvelous it is.  (This isn’t to say that it’ll wind up being marvelous once finished, but it’s marvelous in its present state.)

I’m guilty of cheating on Manuscript #1, having found solace in the arms of my new story.  I did miss my characters from M#1, though, and yearned for them as if they were flesh-and-blood.

An interesting thing has happened in the midst of rolling around with M#2.  Solutions for the plot of M#1 have started coming around.

As the theory goes, when you stop thinking so hard, or stop thinking altogether, answers will reveal themselves.  On their own timeline, unfortunately, which is never as fast as I’d like it.  I know this theory to be true, and I’ve also come to believe that working on two (or more) of the same kind of projects helps them both flow.  There’s less pressure with two related projects, but the same skills and thought patterns are being practiced and mastered.

Writing, for example, becomes less intimidating to me when I’m constantly crafting words in a variety of different ways.  Emails, blog posts, poetry, Manuscript #1, Manuscript #2.  My pen becomes my cohort and playmate.

Working on two pieces of music, almost simultaneously, has helped me while playing the flute.  I’ve played since the age of seven.  While mastering a solo piece, a challenge worthy of excitement and fear, I constantly switched from my seemingly impossible solo to silly show tunes that I’d known for years.  Listening to me play back then, I sounded like a crazy musician who couldn’t make up her mind between Bach or Webber.  Keeping the flute to my lips was all that mattered.  While forcing my fingers to squeeze and release the open-holed keys, switching from the familiar to the foreign every couple of minutes, I eased my hesitancy and awkwardness.

Rather than abandon a pursuit completely, halting mental and physical momentum, just switch pieces for a while.  Set up a new canvas.  Sing a different song.  Bake a tried-and-true cake.  Hike an easier trail.  Switch to something easier, finding confidence in the familiar.  Or start something new, allowing your brain to air out.

This isn’t an invitation to start projects and never finish them.  This is a way to circumvent an obstacle (usually a tired brain!) and move forward.  Even my two manuscripts will require a choice.  Which comes first?  The light-hearted adventure?  Or the heavy character-driven dramedy?  Whichever one I choose, and it’s proving to be a hard choice, they’ll both be part of my writing journey this summer.

Another way I’ve been multi-tasking, in a good way, is by visiting new cafes throughout Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs.  I drew up an extensive list of cafes and bistros to try over the next several months.  My purpose of cafe hopping is to have something to look forward to every week.  It also gets me out of my comfort zone, has saved me money (sitting in a cafe is remarkably cheap), and encourages my writing habit.  By securing one bistro table and an overflowing mug of caffeine, I’m accomplishing four things at once.  Now that’s multi-tasking at its finest.