Prompt progress, week 5

Whoops, what happened to Week 4? Well, I wasn’t able to get out of the office in time to make it to last week’s workshop, unfortunately.

This week’s workshop focused on poetry, both as prompts and inspiration. We also had more exercises than we usually do. One in particular brought home how much of writing is about the choices we make: the choice of words, of form, of structure. What to leave in, what to remove, what to change and rearrange.

We were given a paragraph from a writer that we were supposed to redo into an unstructured poetry form, choosing where to break lines and deciding the rhythm. We talked about where we broke the lines, how those choices change the intent/tone/etc. Then we were given the paragraph in its originally written form…a poem.  It was interesting to see where we chose to break lines versus how the original poet did, what we chose to emphasize versus the original.

Poetry isn’t something I spend time writing, although I do enjoy reading it. Which meant this week’s workshop was going to be a challenge for me. I passed on reading almost everything I wrote this week (and consequently, I won’t have a lot to post here). That’s okay, though. It was a great exercise and pushed me to stretch.

One of the exercises was writing haikus. I actually really enjoy writing haikus — who doesn’t, right? — and I do haikus because I’m bored, or my mind is wandering in a meeting, or to pass time in the car. We had eight minutes to write as many as we wanted, but tonight was a struggle. As an option, we were given a grab bag to pull random words out of for inspiration, but my words didn’t help much. Just wasn’t feelin’ it, as Robyn (the facilitator) would say. I wrote three, but just read this one.

Prompts (from the grab bag, although I didn’t end up using these): moving          friendly           free

oppressing grief, numb
underneath, anger scares me
cannot let it out

Robyn told us something interesting during this part. Write Around Portland does work with prison populations, among others, and she said that during a particular workshop she was doing, several of the participants kept getting thrown in solitary confinement, which meant they had their journals taken from them during that time. It was understandably upsetting to to these inmates, both because someone else could be reading their journals, but also because they wouldn’t be able to write while they were in solitary. So she taught them how to do haikus, because you can do haikus in your head and anyone can memorize a haiku. They could write in their heads — something no one could take from them — and when they got out, they’d then be able to write them down in their journals.

I will never think of haikus in the same way.

The exercise for the next piece derived from another poem we read that was originally written in Spanish. We have a member of the group who speaks fluent Spanish so she read both the original and then the translation. The exercise was to use the same format of the poem, or if we preferred prose, we were given two prompts. I did end up using prose, but I think the poetry focus of the workshop was filtering through nonetheless because as I read it aloud, I realized it could’ve been broken out in some kind of unstructured form. So I rewrote it in that form for comparison as I was typing it for this post. Which was an interesting little exercise of its own.

Prompts:  after the storm              in wet earth

After the storm, relief. Violence of elements, an echo of remaking the world, and then stillness when life begins again.

She can feel it, the storm, waiting to break inside her in a tempest, sure to fell trees and flood creation in despair. She holds it back, barely. Afraid to unleash it, yet wanting the release that comes after. If she can survive it, life begins again. In the stillness. After the storm.

in unstructured poetry form:

After the storm,
relief.
Violence of elements,
an echo of remaking
the world, and
then stillness when
life begins
again.

She can feel it,
the storm,
waiting to break
inside her in
a tempest,
sure to fell trees
and flood creation in
despair.

She holds it back,
barely.
Afraid to unleash it,
yet wanting the release
that comes after.
If she can survive it,
life begins
again.

In the stillness.
After the storm.

Prompt progress, week 3

One more catch-up post of previous pieces written during Prompt, with two more pieces from the third week’s workshop to share. Remember that the prompt I chose for each round is bolded.

Before we started the second round from this session, the facilitator played a few minutes of a soundscape type of thing of the sound of rain running down a window and plinking on the roof, with the distant rumble of thunder. As with the index card from the previous week, it served as inspiration to go with the prompts that we were then given.

Prompts:  outside the window                     in the air

I live in a tree fort. Well, technically, I sleep in a tree fort. Well technically, technically, I don’t live in a tree fort at all, but when I’m snuggled in the downy deliciousness of my bed, tucked into the attic eaves of my quaint little house, way up high on its hill, sheltered by trees, and the rain burbles down the glass of my window like a Zen garden fountain, I pretend I’m in the tree fort I never had as a kid.

My husband and I bought this house, bought it and renovated it. Reclaimed it, really, from the well-meant neglect of its previous owners. A house that we saw not as it was, but as it could be. A place that we could make into our sanctuary from the world.

We’ve fixed it up a room at a time, slowly as we could save up the money, as we could fit in a project between competing work schedules, as we could acquire the knowledge we needed to turn us from clueless newbies to expert renovators. Knowledge like: “dry wall is not ‘mostly the same’ as concrete backerboard”, and “a compound miter saw is your friend”.

The attic was the biggest project, although we tackled it far too soon in our acquisition of knowledge. It’s how we learned about the miter saw, actually. Although looking at the interiors of the closets,  clearly not soon enough.

But it’s done and it’s ours, and when I fall asleep at night in my pretend tree fort, I know I am home.

After the second round, the facilitator brought out four spice jars wrapped in paper so we couldn’t see the contents. We passed them around, carefully sniffing each as we opened ourselves to inspiration. After the round was over, we found out that the four bottles contained coffee, allspice (which everyone thought was cloves), mint, and scented detergent.

We only had a few minutes for this one. As with the last prompt, this prompt showed up more indirectly in my piece.

Prompts:  blue smells like                         on the table

She hates coffee. Always has. Hates not just the taste, but the smell. Sacreligious in a city so reverent about its coffee roasts. Almost tragic, since he is a connoisseur of such things, and it’s a pleasure they can’t share.

But on the rainy mornings when the clouds sit so low that it’s hard to tell whether it’s the beginning of the day or the end, she loves the smell of coffee wafting from the kitchen the most.

It means he will be there, singing tunes from old musicals while he makes oatmeal — or perhaps, if she’s lucky the pancake recipe he created just for her — and their day will start slow and lazy and comforting. She will pad through the rain darkened house, all blue and gray, heading for that cheery yellow rectangle cast through the kitchen door, moving toward that light from death to life. Guided by the light, by the sound of his voice, and by the smell of coffee.

Prompt progress, week 2

Okay, so continuing the catch up of pieces written during Prompt, I have two pieces from the second week’s workshop to share. Remember that the prompt I chose for each round is bolded.

This was from the second round of prompts in the session. I can’t remember how long we had to write this round of prompts, but I think it was about eight minutes.

Prompts:  the wind picked up                           at the back of the garage

At the back of the garage, in a box with corners weakened by years of mildew, there are damp and moldy stacks of magazines. They are old enough to earn the moniker “vintage”, though their condition renders them merely trash.

It is not the box, nor the stack of magazines, that gives Billy nightmares, although they feature in his dreams every night. It is what he discovered beneath the pile of magazines, searching for hidden treasure when his stepfather was out long enough for Billy to go exploring without fear of being caught. It was treasure, of a sort, although certainly not the kind of treasure he’d ever envisioned. Not gold, not rubies. Not a stash of candy bars, nor even the girlie magazines his best friend’s older brothers kept hidden in their closet.

He’d dug halfway down when he discovered the hand, cold and crawling with bugs. He yanked his own away, fearing contamination, but then the fascination with abomination that is the particular ailment of young boys compelled him to keep digging. More parts…a foot…a thumb. Bones.

He found the head when the garage door opened.

After the second round, we were given index cards and had a couple of minutes to write down the contents of our bag or purse. Then we passed the card to the person on the left and the card we were given was used as inspiration in conjunction with the next prompts. The card I was given listed: bulging grapefruit, chocolate-stained deposit slip, pink umbrella, an unwrapped rectangle of Dentyne, pen, 3 cashews, folded workshop agenda, cell phone, keys, wallet. I ended up utilizing the pink umbrella in my piece.

I think we had about ten minutes for this prompt. I ended up passing on reading this one to the group, but now I wish I had.

Prompts:  he never left home without                    in her hand

He never left home without the pink umbrella. Not “a”. “The”. As in, “definite”. As in, “definitive”. As in, “the definitive pink umbrella”.

But not his. Hers.

She’d carried it the day she died. Held it in her hand, actually. Crossing the street in a ground-soaking rain, the kind they called toad stranglers back home, but here, such rains were as common as daisies.

He always loved that she chose pink for such a mundane accessory. Not the usual black, nor the brown of the more sophisticated set. But pink. And not dainty, feminine pink, either. Wild, affirming magenta, a live-out-loud sort of color, just like she was.

It came to him with the rest of her effects, what little ther was of them. Her clothes, her few items of jewelry, the silly candy necklace from one of her students that morning, nearly melted away from lying in the rain so long. But not melted away completely, shielded, as it was, by the pink umbrella.

His own umbrella was practical black. Everyday, mundane black. Just like him. Efficient and plain, it did its job without flash or flair. But today, he thought maybe it was time for pink.

Prompt progress, week 1

I’m three weeks in to the ten weeks of the Prompt workshop and enjoying the challenge. And it has been a challenge. Nothing about what we do in the workshop is like my usual process, not to mention the practice of reading my work aloud (to strangers, no less!).

Sharing these quickly written pieces with other people has been interesting. Encouraging, even. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before, but I had the idea this week that I ought to share at least one of my pieces each week here, as well. So I’m going to try to post at least one piece each week from that week’s workshop.

In each session, we do three sets of prompts, each set followed by reading our piece aloud and receiving feedback. We can opt not to read if we wish. The rounds are timed — sometimes only a couple of minutes, sometimes eight or ten, once as long as fifteen minutes. Each round, we’re given two prompts that we can pick from, or choose something else entirely if we’re inspired by something else. For each piece I post here, I’ll explain what that particular exercise round involved and mark the prompt I picked in bold, followed by the piece itself. To catch up, I’ve picked out a few from the previous workshops to share, but to keep the posts manageable, I’ll separate each week into its own post.

Prompt Workshop, Week 1

This was our first set of prompts. The first part of the session was spent in a written “conversation with the person to our left”, in which we couldn’t ask yes/no questions. We then read them aloud as a dialogue. After that, we took a time coming up with our group rules, such as “We will assume the writing is fiction” and “We won’t worry about spelling” and “We will silence our cell phones”.

We didn’t do any kind of round-the-table introduction, so this one served as our intro to each other, through our writing. I think we had six minutes for this round.

Prompts:  My name                          I come from

My name is one of my favorite things about me. Mainly because I got to choose it, and that always gives me a good (and kind of crazy) story to tell. It also used to be very unique, and even though when I was in school, the fad of personalized everything meant there were no pencils with my name to be found on the racks, nor personalized unicorn stickers, I always felt this was an endorsement of my very own unique me-ness.

I’m proud of my name, every letter of it, and i’m proud of my identity, of where I come from. Which is odd, really, since I knew from the time I was very small that I did not want to stay there. The wild, sort-of-but-not-really rugged wilds of Wyoming, so sparsely paopulated and seemingly exotic to everyone who doesn’t live there. It is also something that is innately part of my unique me-ness, a place I’m proud to be from, and love very much in a special secret way that I can only tell in pictures and stories and memories.

I did not belong there — Wyoming does not fit me and I do not fit Wyoming — but I’m better for it, and I’m glad that it loomed so large in my growing-up life. So few can claim to be from Wyoming, and (used to be) so few can claim to have my name…they’ve become my own Venn diagram of identity.

Ideas and inspiration

Those who’ve read my stories will sometimes ask me where I got the idea for something in the story. The details of the answer vary, but the answer itself is the same: “all over the place”. It’s as Neil Gaiman once put it: “You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.”

Case in point: this morning, I was sitting in the hygienist’s chair this morning for my biannual teeth cleaning, listening somewhat absently to her make small talk. She was telling me about her kids and the challenges of paying for all the costs that compound when they participate in a sport like basketball or baseball — the gear, the uniforms, the registration fees, the shoes. She makes use of hand-me-downs and secondhand stores, but the shoes are the hardest, she says, because getting the right size in hand-me-downs at the time when her sons need them is tricky, and they’re one of the hottest items at Goodwill. Which means new shoes for her boys, more often than not, and even a relatively inexpensive pair is $80. “And he’s only ten years old!” she says. “He has no concept of eighty dollars.”

I was listening, but I was also thinking about my current story, because it’s what I do. All the time, pretty much. What she was saying wasn’t a new thought to me, but for whatever reason, it sparked a quick sequence of thought that led to a flash of inspiration and then an idea explosion, all in the space of 10 to 15 seconds.

Thinking about how to explain the concept of eighty dollars to a ten year-old led me to think about how a parent of modest but comfortable means, say, 100 years ago, might’ve provided things like shoes for their children and in turn, how those children would’ve understood the difference between needs and wants. Which led to a similar scenario in earlier times (way earlier times) when humanity as a whole was significantly more agrarian and how our ideas of needs shift as humanity progresses.

From there, I imagined a never-actually-existed-but-nice-to-imagine bucolic scene of village life reminiscent of fairy tales, all stucco cottages with thatched rooves and simple, contented folk who work hard and always have enough to eat, children and adults engaged in activities of a bucolic village variety. (I know, I know…me and Walt Disney.)

And that led directly to another scene which I can’t describe because it’s spoilery, but which solved a plot issue I’ve been struggling with in Book 2 AND gave me an idea how to solve a larger problem of character perspective I’ve been at a loss to deal with until now. I was so excited to finally have a breakthrough on this part of the story that I actually clenched the arms of the dental chair to keep myself from leaping out of it to grab my writer’s journal out of my purse, which the hygienist mistook for pain and asked me worriedly if she’d hurt me. I reassured her she hadn’t, grinning like a maniac the whole time. I may have freaked her out a little.

I have work to do today, an appointment this afternoon, and dinner and tomorrow’s lunch to make this evening, so I’m just going to have to contain myself until later tonight. It’ll be harder than waiting for Santa.

Living creatively

I’m bursting with creativity lately. The prospect of my creative room has me thrumming like a live wire, waiting impatiently at the starting line to start the race. A sprint or a marathon, which will it be? Will I be in a frenzy of creation that flares like a supernova, then collapses inward to a black hole? A secret fear, but I don’t think it’s going to happen like that. I think this burn has only just begun.

As the creative room takes shape — or the preparation for it, anyway — the creative life I’ve long dreamed of is taking shape, too. Not fully, as I’ve always dreamed of being able to quit my job to work on writing and art full-time, and that’s just not going to happen any time soon, unfortunately. I work a lot, so my creative endeavors have to be squeezed into the slivers of time left over, and those slivers, they are often miniscule. (But this is not the time to be unappreciative of a job that pays my bills and makes those wonderful extras like a creative room possible. I’ll juggle and focus on the fact that I at least have this much available to me.)

Writing is going to occupy most of those miniscule slivers, but I’ve got years of backlogged art jammed up inside that are going to need a release, too, and perhaps in the beginning, they’ll be the bigger part of that river flowing outward until the pressure is released. But it’s an embarrassment of riches, a veritable downpour of expression through pen and brush, and this, this, is what I want my life to be. There’s more still to come, but it’s taking shape, becoming something I recognize from my long-held dreams.

Making space

If you’ve been following my adventures on my regular blog, you know that my husband and I are planning to turn our guest room into a creative room in a few weeks, and that I’ve been as giddy as an untrained puppy about it. There’s a lot wrapped up in this room for me beyond the excitement of getting to do another project — and one that’s almost completely decorating, with little of that boring “preparation” nonsense — that is complicated and too personal to go into here. But suffice to say, my wheels have been spinning for a month or so since I decided I wanted to do this project. Or perhaps more correctly, the poor little hamsters that run my wheels have been spinning their poor little hamster hearts out.

I’ve been on a creative high for weeks now but haven’t written much, nor even edited much since my big push before and immediately after my pitch critique. Previously, that would have sent me into a negative feedback loop of anxiety, frustration, desperation, and shame; when I’m “normal”, I cannot function if I go for more than a few days without writing, so to not be writing for lengths of time makes me a basketcase.

Unfortunately, this last couple of years have been a series of long stretches of not-writing, and that hasn’t been a good thing. I’ve mentioned it before so I won’t go into it again here, but suffice to say, it’s been a real struggle to deal with not writing as a regular state of affairs for myself. And to secretly fear that it was going away. A writer’s worst fear.

But no, I can feel it there, waiting. I can feel that story percolating inside me like it always has, evolving and coalescing. Plot points, character developments, scenes and narratives and setting possibilities, oh my!

So when this sudden urge to do the creative room struck, I decided to let myself take this little intermission from that familiar writing flow that I’d been feeling during the editing/pitch process. To trust that it would still be there, waiting for me. Trust my instincts, trust that taking the time out to concentrate on the creative room, to enjoy all the excitement I get from thinking about it and planning it and making my vision a reality.

I’m happy to report that letting myself take this detour was the right thing. I’m so excited to get it done I can hardly contain myself! And in the meantime, I’ve been focusing on my other creative pursuits, namely collaging and art journaling. All that energy of waiting to start the creative room needed an outlet, and although it’ll be so much easier and more fun to collage and art journal in my creative room, I’m not holding off doing either of them until then, something my Practical Self probably would have. After all, not having a dedicated space for such activities didn’t stop me from doing them before I decided to do this makeover, so why should it stop me now? That’s my Creative Self giving my Practical Self the finger.

Soon, the creative room will be ready for me to create all the live long day (and night, knowing me). I’ll have a lovely space to write in, with a different view than I have now and a door I can shut while I’m tussling with a particularly thorny plot issue. (Or, more likely, getting myself out of a plot corner.) That same space can be used for playing with paints and making messes with glitter and scribbling angry screeds in red crayon across a crudely painted background. There’ll be space for my husband to create, too, and for us to spend entire Saturdays being arty together while we listen to our usual NPR Saturday schedule. Space, too, for my dear friends to do the same, and for us to make crazy art and laugh and exclaim about each others’ talents and become closer than ever.

I’m excited for what’s ahead once this room is done, and for the possibilities it holds for me and my writing. I’m not one to believe that you need everything just so before you can start writing — I wrote my first book in all kinds of places, and in all kinds of circumstances, whether they were conducive to writing or not — but it feels luxurious to have a space for it. It feels like a tremendous privilege, and one that I earned.

On women's fashions in an imaginary world, and AU crossover fic possibilities

Oh my, how has it been more than a month since I last posted? Well, it’s summer, and of course busy. I’m behind on everything, including writing, unfortunately. It goes like that sometimes. Sigh.

I have a long post percolating about e-books and another about self-publishing, but haven’t even started writing them yet, so who knows if I’ll get to them or not. In the meantime, here’s a little something to put a smile in your day.

The setup: Cat was giving me feedback on Chapter 16, which included the scene where Grant, Lucius, and Tatiana go undercover, so to speak. As tends to be the case in our online exchanges, hilarity ensued.

Cat: I find it oddly endearing and hilarious that both Grant and Lucius have a sense of nice women’s wear.

Me: Inorite? Can you see them at the seamstress, picking out fabrics for her? Grant would be all, “You’re a winter, orange is not flattering on you. No, that pink is hideous and satin is for prostitutes. Put it back.” And Lucius would be, “Now, Grant…if she likes the pink, let her try it on. It might look better off the hanger. Oh Tatiana, dear, you need better undergarments if you’re to pull that one off. Foundations, dear, foundations.”

Cat: OMG *dies* Grant and Lucius host a very special edition of What Not to Wear…in HELL.

Me: YES THIS! Tatiana would like some dress not realizing it has a low cut bodice, and Grant’s all, “Sorry, but no. You don’t have the bosom for that.” And she’d be all embarrassed but rather than admit that, she’d get mad at him and tell him to go suck a goat, and he’d be like, “For someone who doesn’t want to dress like a whore, you sure talk like one.” Lucius would have to break it up by distracting her with pretty lace gloves, and then a dress with lots of lacy ruffles would catch her eye and she’d be, “OOOH PRETTY” and then “SHUT UP GRANT IT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE YOUR GRANDMOTHER’S DOILIES VOMITED ALL OVER IT!” Oh man. Now I have a whole new series to write.

Cat: Let the fanfiction begin….!!!!

Won't someone think of the zombies??

Libraries in communities across the country are facing devastating budget cuts or even closure. To say that this is bad is to call the Gulf Oil spill “unfortunate”. Thanks to some amazing people, a great grassroots advocacy organization, and some truly hilarious and talented folks, there’s a clever new campaign to raise awareness and donations: Zombies for Libraries! They’re the brilliant minds behind this terrific and hilariously awesome video:

(Check out their site for more great videos featuring zombies, libraries, and brainnnnnsssssss. I love their motto: ”Libraries Feed Brains! Brains Feed Zombies! Help the Zombies Help The Libraries!”)

Without libraries, people of every age and income bracket — but especially low-income kids — lose a vital link to the best, most valuable resource anyone has: information and knowledge. For some, it’s their only access to online facilities or information or both.

Without libraries, yours truly couldn’t have read the hundreds of books she burned through in her formative years. Books were my haven and my escape, and there were and are a lot of kids just like me who probably couldn’t even function if they didn’t have a way to feed their book hunger.

The librarian at my public library growing up granted me an exception to both their checkout limit and age rule because my reading level was higher than the children’s and young adults’ sections (though I did read most everything in both of those sections) and I read so much that I was basically checking out a new book every day when I was limited to only six books at once. The summer I spent in an even smaller town that my own hometown would’ve been seriously impacted if not for the twice weekly trips to the little library up the street (partly because I was recovering from a broken arm that summer); the librarian there waived the limitations for me, too, after the first three weeks of visits.

It was librarians who first introduced me to Jane Austen, Robert Heinlein, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Ursula K. LeGuin, S.E. Hinton, and others well before any high school or college literature class. Kids like I was aren’t rare, and all over the country, librarians are some of the most important figures in a young person’s life.

We have librarians to thank for some of the best books for children and young adults, because their word-of-mouth recommendations and networking are considered better and more powerful PR than any book review or NYT list appearance. If librarians support a book, publishers are known to expand their push for a particular book or even reconsider the marketing budget a book initially received.

And it’s libraries and librarians we have to thank for keeping the most commonly censored books, the ones that regularly appear on book banning lists, alive and well and available for everyone. They are staunch activists against censorship — including internet censorship — and they stand up to some pretty frightening machinery of anger and hysteria and ignorance.  Because of them, libraries truly represent the idea of “freedom of information”, and if that concept has any importance to you, then you’ll consider doing something to save libraries.

Book 2 and the impact of real life

Boy, Book 2 is not coming easy. I know where it begins and ends and have a pretty good idea of at least some of the plot points I want to cover in between. I have a clearer idea of the themes and character arcs than I did at this point in Book 1 (or for at least half of Book 1, for that matter). I’ve known the opening scenes of this book for almost 2 years now. And I now know these characters better than I know some of my real life friends and family.

So what the hell, Book 2?

Aside from the aforementioned opening scenes — which I wrote more than a year ago — and a pretty steamy (though not explicit) and intensely passionate scene that was the result of a fantastic brainstorming idea while I was at the coast around New Years’…I have very little to show of Book 2 at the moment. It’s not for lack of ideas, either, or knowing where it needs to go. Or excitement, for that matter. I don’t know what this is that has me kind of piddly-dinking around.

Writer’s Block? No, I don’t think so. I’ve had writer’s block before, and this doesn’t feel the same. I can feel the story in there, percolating, and hamsters that run the little wheels inside my brain are scurrying around as much as ever. Oh, I still have that undercurrent of panic that I imagine many writers experience when you don’t yet know exactly where the story is going and every little plot point and character evolution hasn’t been nailed down. But in general, I have a good grip on this story and what I want it to look like when I finish it.

I’ve alluded on here before to the impact of some real life stuff on my creative life, and though that real life stuff has been getting the attention it needs in order to keep me from wanting to rub soup in people’s hair, it’s still been interfering with my creative life. Time is always an issue, of course —  it’s always an issue for anyone who has to fit their writing life in the small gaps between a full-time job and a regular life — but more with my inner creative life. There’s a lot processing through my brain, and the last year has required a lot more brain power than usual. I’ve had to switch on the auxiliary power, so to speak.

I’m realizing now that it’s been obvious why I couldn’t get back into my writing groove. There just isn’t a lot of energy left for my creative spirit to draw from, and hasn’t been for awhile. Considering that creativity really draws a lot of power all on its own (since I’m apparently going with the whole power station metaphor here), the necessity of diverting some mental energy to other stuff has meant a blackout — or maybe a brownout — on the Creativity Power Grid.

What’s frustrating, however, is that it was the ability to retreat into writing that oftentimes gave me relief in the past from the same kinds of Life Stuff that’s intruded so much now. In the past, I would’ve used some of the power generated by the Creativity Power Grid to get through some of the energy shortages on the Life Power Grid. Except in this case, power’s being diverted away from the Creativity Power Grid, so it’s a problem that compounds itself.

Aaaaaand now that the power station analogy has been thoroughly beaten into the ground….

The point is, I’m not really where I want to be with Book 2 but as with most things in life, I don’t think there’s any shortcut around the hurdle that stands between me and making progress on Book 2. I’m going to have to actually clear that hurdle, or dismantle it. It’s frustrating, but journey, destination, yada yada. And maybe this is what I have to go through to make Book 2 (and 3) the stories they need to be.