A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Six-Hundred-And-Ten

I have been feeling pretty stressed the last several days.  There's been a lot of drama going on with people in my life and I have been feeling drained from it.  In some ways, that makes it more difficult to write, but in others, it makes writing, if not easier, better in some ways.  I don't mean that the writing is improved in terms of the output, though that might be true, at least some of the time, but better in the sense of my own experience.  It is difficult, a lot of the time, to get into that mental space when things are hectic and I am feeling overwhelmed, but when I finally do, it can be much more valuable for me, I suppose.  This isn't even just about the ability to write about things to vent, though I do that as well, but more about the value of entering that creative mental space.  I am not even certain how much is about that creative space itself and how much is just about stepping away from the rest, just clearing it out for a few minutes in order to focus on my writing.  That is one thing that is valuable about having an ongoing project for me, as it forces me to write about something that is, in general, largely unrelated to what has been going on around me.  Beyond whatever I get from the writing itself, I have to clear out the other stuff for a few minutes, which can be difficult at times, but those are often the times when it is also the most beneficial.

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