The Adventures of a Creative Pessimistic Procrastinator : The Turtle of Torture

Once upon a time, (in our galaxy) I was able to consistently write every day. The scenes unfolded at a not-so-fast, but tolerable pace. I was trucking along. And then, something changed. I didn't know what it was for sure (there is at least one blog post about it). Something was off. Progress became slower, and each writing session was more torturous than the last. I dreaded sitting down at my computer. The pace came to a near-stop. A turtle pace. The turtle of torture.

Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!

My good friend Joe tried to help by working out the details of my plot with me. And it did help. I could see it better, but something was missing or in the wrong place. I was dissapointed that I couldn't push past whatever this was. I took everyone's advice and put the whole thing away for a while. The idea was my brain would come back to it on it's own. So I busied myself with other things (I got a lot more cleaning done). I learned how to cook vegetarian cuisine. I had a baby. I started a mural business. And as the time passed, I grew anxious that my brain would never circle back around to the book. The dreams I had of finishing it, and of publishing it, faded into memory.

Then, Saturday night, I was watching a movie and sending emails when the answer just popped into my head. It had been nearly a year. A. Year. It had been months since my book had even crossed my mind (besides the occasional ten-second bought of intense guilt). "Surprise, Jamie! Here's that thing you'd been looking for!" I like my brain's surprises (much better than the surprises you get while attempting to work on a computer running windows 8).