the gods are whispering about me (and not in a good way)

So, the fingers' ire is soothed somewhat, after a morning knitting class. No, not crochet. The class falsely advertised knitting or crocheting, but was knitting only. So, oh well. Take what you can get, fingers! Here I am "in action"--
So, that was part of my Saturday brain rehabilitation project, after many straight days of all-day writing. Post-knitting I went to see an exceedingly stupid movie with Alexandra and my mom (Blades of Glory) -- Alexandra fairly wheedled to see it; she does love a goofball movie. As an antidote to the lowbrow humor and glimpsing Will Ferrell's troublesome midriff, I watched Lord of the Rings last night at home, while. . . yes, knitting.

Gandalf: YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!
Laini: knit one, purl two

Okay, okay, so more like: knit, knit, knit -- I don't know how to purl yet. That's next week. But enough about knitting. More about brain rehabilitation.

You writers will so know what I mean when I say there is a chasm, a huge emotional trench that separates a good writing day from a bad one. On a good writing day, or better yet, a string of them, it's like orchestras playing sunsets up the sky, and a pantheon of gods looking down in benevolent approval. You can almost hear them whispering amongst themselves about you, reading passages aloud from your work in progress and, you know, marveling at them. A bad day? That is, a day in which a little seed germinates and grows a shoot of "Oh God, my book is boring," or "Oh, frick. Where do I go from here?" in your brain? Days like that give you cut-puppet-string posture. Days like that make you desperate for the other kind of days, eager to get the gods whispering about you again, in a good way, not a pathetic way.

Zeus: Poor Laini. Did you read that last chapter?
Athena: Whew! But she's trying so hard.
Zeus: Don't you think you could, you know, help her out a little?
Athena: Me? That's not my job. Send one of your others daughters, the what-are-they-called? Muses? Yeah. Send them.
Zeus: I did! Nothing's working.
Athena: Poor thing. Maybe she's just used it all up. Maybe she's done.
Zeus: Yeah. Maybe she should take up knitting.

Alright, alright! No, I do not hear gods whispering about me. And I also do not think my book is boring. How can a book be boring when you get to write about vanishings and weird fruit and flying carpets and sea serpents' parasites and caravansarays for dragonflies and jars of baby teeth you can shake like a maraca? When you get to write lines like, "Don't squish my larvae." ?? It's just that I'd been on such a roll, days -- weeks? -- of feeling like I had broken through some barrier in my brain (leaving a person-shaped hole, limbs wildly splayed, like in a cartoon) and found out that actually, despite what I previously believed, writing is easy. It was nice, believing that for a short time -- kind of like believing in the tooth fairy or beneficent government.

But it's not always easy. I'm not one to write straight through a messy first draft. My brain doesn't work like that. I need to write and write, and then reread and reflect and revise, and then continue writing. It's my one step forward, one step back approach. Guaranteed to drive you crazy and make you think you overhear Zeus pitying you. But it's what works for me. So I hit a reflect and revise stretch. It's all part of my process. It makes my brain hurt a little, hence the knitting and the stupid movie: rehab. When I was an editor at Lonely Planet, I used to take the occasional "mental health day," and that's what this was.

Now I'm back to work (or will be once I finish blogging!) and determined to squirm my way back to the 'writing-while-the-gods-and-woodland-creatures-beam-at-me-with-their-big-manga-eyes' stage. Because DAMN if that isn't just the best thing ever!