Day 36: Silence

Are you missing Frank? Wondering what's happening to him? Me too. I promise I'll get back to him soon. Truly.

I had to take a hiatus from Frank the last week, because I had to focus on a rewrite of Spirit Dust which I will be submitting for the Samuel French short play competition. As it is an honor to have been chosen to submit for this, and it is an opportunity to possibly get published, I want to make sure I am submitting my very best work. I took Spirit Dust into class last week to get feedback on my previous rewrite, and there were still some unanswered questions I needed to address. So that has been my focus this week, as tomorrow is the last chance to have it read in class again before the submission deadline.

The other thing I've been focusing on this week is me. As I wrote in Day 31: Eating for Two, I'm learning that I need to refuel my energy stores more often in order to be able to be creative. So I made sure to schedule time with friends, to exercise, to get a little pampered, to see some theater. I only forgot one thing: time to be quiet.

My tummy got a bit upset with me on Thursday and Friday (I still don't know what I did to offend it). This forced me to cancel some of my carefully laid refueling plans and just be home and rest. During that quiet time, I finally felt my creative juices kick in again of their own accord. Instead of aggressively approaching my artist brain and saying "ok, we have to write now, I only have til 3" -- at which point she would accuse me of never having enough time for her and haughtily turn her back to me - I was able to sit back, casually chat with her awhile, and wait for her to approach and say "hey there good lookin', would you like to take me out for a spin?". (Apparently my artist brain likes to play a little hard-to-get.) I thus rediscovered a place where I didn't feel any resistance, where writing was the only thing I wanted to do. It was - is - a wonderful feeling.

While I won't say the rewrites on Spirit Dust have been easy - any more than I imagine trying to re-sculpt the angle of a bent knee in a marble statue would be easy -- the process of writing, of being "in the zone" has been delightful.

The lesson? As I am attempting to restructure my life and work schedule -- to rewrite the script of my daily life -- I need to remember the importance of silence. I believe I wrote of this lesson once before in this blog -- apparently it is one I must continue to learn.