In which I'm pretty much over it.

Simultaneously, I love and hate this time of year, or rather, since I am stuck in a perpetual carousel of never ending classes, this time of the semester. This is the transition period that moves me from the over-zealous optimistic student who was ready and willing to finish assignments and readings early, to this dark, cynical, pessimistic student who is ready to start committing to the minimum.

And, this semester, I really feel like a bitch about it, because I actually really like both of my teachers this fall. Both my social studies methods and quantitative reasoning teachers are awesome. They are both a credit to their profession, and I enjoy going to class. Both are very dedicated to our classes, and find lots of interesting and fun things for us to do. I'm not really bored with either of the subjects, it's just that this is what happens in the last stretch, when I start counting down the days until Thanksgiving Break and calculating how long I can effectively put something off before it's procrastinating.

The worst part about this problem is that for some unknown reason, that should really have no bearing on this but remains oddly attached, whenever I slink into this pit of educational loathing I seem to find my creative zenith. I can't seem to force myself to sit down and knock out a writing assignment, but I can spend nearly whole day plot lining and drafting rough scenes. This makes absolutely no sense. But, the fact remains that this week I have been more inspired and flirting with the muse than I have been in a long time-- which if I could measure would probably come out to about this time last semester...

So, as in usual procrastinator's fashion, I spent the majority of my day validating that if I was going to put off my homework, I didn't have to feel bad about it if I did two things:

1) If I did PART of my homework (a.k.a. the reading necessary for making my online post), it wasn't really procrastination, it was moderation.

And, as the wise Aristotle once said, "Seek moderation in all things." In this line of thinking, after reading my chapter and taking note as a preliminary outline, taking the next step to actually type it up and post it was just overkill.

2)As long as I was doing SOMETHING productive, I didn't have to feel bad about not doing something else.

Now, this reasoning comes from the fact that the last couple of days I have made major movement along the plot line of my novel. After yet another inevitable creative dry spell following a sudden inspirational assault on my imagination, I hadn't managed to make a lot of linear progress. After three years, I've discovered my process best works by taking advantage of these massive blocks of inspiration to work on Singularity, what I deem as "Part I" and which I have been writing as linear as possible. It never lasts long though. Inevitably, I find myself at a point where I feel like I barely have enough talent and momentum to write a complete sentence. In these periods where I need to write something, anything, I find myself free writing scenes about later parts of the story-- ones that might come in the later books ( Infinity and Relativity), about characters that I haven't introduced in the linear story yet or incidents that have not occurred, but have been set in motion, or scenes that explain the causes of the events that have been addressed.

It's mid-semester now though, so I'm not trying to squeeze my imagination like a dried out sponge in the meager hope of a little idea I can spin into something substantial. I'm so fucking full of ideas I can't leave the house without taking a notebook or go to bed without one on my nightstand. All I want to do is read, read, read, and I'm searching for new books like a dehydrated man in the desert looking for water. But, I can barely make it through a chapter of my methods book or find a valid reason to work on my math homework, after all, the test isn't for another week.

Which is why my storyboard went from this--



-- to this --



Hey, it doesn't look like much, but I added five new scenes. And, even more exciting is that as a result of this recent surge I have drafted seven written scenes from ideas previously posted on the board to be written. Considering I've just completed forty hours of observation which I put a lot of energy into, and outputting a medium level concerted effort towards my classes, not to mention combating executive level incompetence on the part of my University in trying to complete my application for student teaching... I'm pretty damn proud of this level of progress.

The only problem now is that I don't have the energy to type up the stack of drafts I have completed-- ten all together since I had three previously in the cooker, waiting in a binder marked "draft notes" where all my hand-written notes go until I can use them.



Here they are-- ten stacks of paper, just waiting to be typed up... as well as my Moe-dog, who sits suspiciously eying them, sniffing them until they reveal their secrets. Inside my brain is that little voice encouraging me, saying "Just get them typed up and add them to "Part I", and then do a happy little dance when you see the total number of words and pages that will result. Hell, it might even push you well over 50,000 words!". But, then I say, "What they hell Little Voice? Why can't you ever get that excited when I have a writing assignment?" And, at that point all hope of getting anything done gets thrown out because that little voice goes to the room inside my brain where she lives, to pout.