T’was Brillig….

Ice fog rolled in yesterday.  It’s a colder fog, seen only in winter, when the snow has melted on a day of respite but the air remains chilly.

I wish I could have gone out and wandered in it.  It has been a week of distractions and I felt in my soul the need for a touch of magic.

Spousal Unit is away on conference.  Young one is in preparation for her great nautical adventure.  I am managing my usual, plus the load Spousal Unit typically handles.  It is grocery week.  There’s a teachers’ meeting tonight.  And like a sensible thing, with all this going on, I elected to participate in Inktober, a drawing-a-day challenge, with my eldest. Insurance issues are still pending as well, and I have errands to run after the meeting.

I feel pulled from this thing to that, never being allowed to settle on anyone item for more than a few minutes.  The writing has been affected, or perhaps I’ve got that backwards: the poor writing is affecting me.  Jumbled grammar, repetitive phrasing, overused words. Little of it sparks.

Is it any wonder I need a touch of mystery amongst the mundane?

To that end, I have taken a break from Handmaid’s Tale, and picked up a random buy called “Mythago Wood,” by Robert Holdstock.  It has the right autumnal mystique to it, but it has drifted into evolution, psychiatry, and something akin to pagan/witchery.  Not sure how well I will like it in the end.  It feels heavy.  Not quite the flavor I was looking for, but undeniably engaging.

I find I need an engaging idea to pull me forward in my own work, something to aim at that I wish to capture, like faerie gleam.  A sparkling bit of juicy flame to call me onward.

Right now, it is scene link, scene link, sentence smooth, and order comb.  Muses said there’d be days like this.

But then what do I expect?  I haven’t been exactly faithful to showing up at the page.  Life keeps getting in the way until the point where I let it, which usually means I’m scared about something.  The usual inner critic stuff.  Unoriginal, repetitive, uninteresting, cheesy.

My mind is engaged in trying to hit all these practical, somewhat mercurial, targets.  There’s no space for mulling, savouring.  I might forget the tactical, to the ruin of all.  And the irony of it all is that I don’t even get a report card to tell me if I made the grade!

I have to remind myself that if writing is my mission, then mulling is as tactical as sleep, something else I neglect too often.  I think there are times wherein my mind just wants to play, and so I stay up doing screen things.  Imagining needs to be fun, to have the whimsy of play, or the gears grind.

I’m all for the discipline that produces our dreams, but if one over-schedules, I think one kills the flow.  “We will now participate in play from precisely 4:37pm to 5:02pm” just doesn’t work any more than “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”

I need to kick through more leaves.