Writing About Writing Vol 12

“The Elements”

Back on September 1, I explained – err, shared Will Smith’s explanation of – the relationship of talent and skill.
Those are not the elements I intend to speak on this month.

February 5^th was my, unbeknownst to either of you, official end to my holiday malaise.  I had been thinking and brainstorming on shit I would write when I sat down and put myself to it, but had not typed a damn thing in weeks.  The last place I had left off in the moment was my ongoing beef with Santa Claus.
That morning, I sat down at work after dropping the princess off at school, and I started typing.  Pt II was born in less than an hour.  A little later, III was real.  As of when you read this, I am done through at LEAST part VI and have plans for the series.

Focusing still on that same week, I wrote my Hotep Wednesday post THE morning it was to be posted.  I wrote The Bakery later on that afternoon at the end of my lunch break.  Friday morning, I wrote the two most recent Marlon entries into the True Story© series.  I have one writer friend who I share ideas with in hopes to motivate the both of us.  The conversation we had that Friday afternoon was about “The Elements.”
Specifically, I said “Time and motivation don’t always arrive at the same time.”

     The elements I speak of here are time and motivation.  Sometimes when you WANT to write, you don’t have time to grind it out.  When you have shit you want to write about; your car breaks down, your dog gets pregnant, your fuckboy president is trying to start WWIII on Twitter, ANYTHING that keeps you from the 30-90 minutes you need to sit down and type.
[Phlip note: my dog is a boy]

So yeah, time and motivation owe you nothing and will arrive to the party when the fuck they feel like it.  And if you know how parties go, the prettier of the two will be the one to show up fashionably late after the other has gotten drunk or high, or drunk and high and is now of little use to the--…  wait.
Sorry.

There is a short window where your best work can be presented.  That is in those fleeting moment when time and motivation line up JUST like so.  They don’t always come when you want them, but best damned believe you BETTER strike when you have them both in hand concurrently.  You never know when you’ll see them again.

As “jumping the shark” is it may seem to be about the task of writing about 15-20k words in one week of weekdays alone while still holding full time employment and caring for a 6 year-old, you’ll find yourself nursing full sets of cohesive and related ideas.  Don’t plan to space them out consecutively, but spread them out for long-term development.  Take the Santa story.  I technically started that LAST (2016) Christmas time.  I revisited it this past (2017) Christmas time in two posts.  Sitting and stewing on it allowed it to become a fully developed long-term piece.  Working on large amounts of it while I had the lightning allowed it to develop better, in my opinion at least.

The short answer is to be prepared to strike while you have time and motivation, and let beautiful things commence.