write away, I say!

"There are moments when time stands still: Breath halts in the air, wind ceases to blow, emotion dies in the heart....Right now is one of these moments. Right now I feel nothing."

I've been working on my creative non-fiction story for next weeks assignment. We've been asked to submit something to the pre-professional conference next month, and rather than be creative and come up with something completely new I've decided to submit an edited version of the story I wrote for last weeks assignment. I've just found I don't have the time to come up with something completely new, seeing as I spend all my free time working on a novel that is nowhere near ready for submission, or staring off idly into space thinking about things also non-submission worthy...
But last week we were asked to tell a story of a difficult experience we've endured, something painful that we find hard to talk about. The first thing that popped into my mind was the car wreck 5 years ago, so I decided to write about that. Truth be told, it wasn't very difficult to write. I found the details of that even come back to me with surprising detail and a sad lack of emotion, so I was able to write everything down just as I remembered it - doing my best not to embellish. 

It probably took me a total of twenty minutes to fill 8 pages. It was the editing down and refining that took longer. I spent hours weeding out unnecessary details and pruning ugly words until it flowed to my liking. I still have to have a few people peer edit it for me before I turn it in, but when I'm done I'll post it here for you all to read, if you'd like. I'm not usually one to post my personal work - but I guess I need to get over that fear sometime if I ever want to be published in anything...

While I was writing however, I was struck, as often occurs during the pursuit of a creative tale, by the ideas and thoughts of others. Thousands of stories I've heard and read and pursued over the past few weeks seemed to all come crashing together in the same shocking moment, and I found myself struggling to get them all down before they escaped from my memory. I've never typed so fast in my life!

I made major headway on my novel today, the one I've been working on for a few years now. It was wonderful to have all those half formed ideas come into sharper focus and lay themselves out before me in such a neat and orderly fashion. Usually I find myself struggling to fit together the pieces of my puzzled mind, but today the words seemed to simply fly from my finger tips and onto the page! It was awesome!

The only downside to having your creative juices fly on overload is that you tend to forget everything else happening in life at that current moment, and sometimes you miss important events because of it - like school, or homework, or sleep...

Luckily today I found my mind only wandering during one class - and my homework just happened to be my creative writing assignment, so no harm done! Now if I can only remember to eat some dinner and go to bed on time...

the middle

Life passes: sometimes fast, sometimes slow.

Presently I find myself in a stage of uncertanity. I cannot decide whether I would like thing to speed up or slow down. I desire what lies ahead, enormously - desperately, even. I want it beyond any dream at all. And yet I feel unprepared and frightened: frightened that without proper concentration and experience, my future will not be the future I desire. This uncertainty has left my brain in a jumbled mess.

In the morning I'm staring at a blank wall, seeing everything while seeing nothing: my imagination bumbling around in my head. Then I realized there are things to be done in the world, so I go out and I do them, and suddenly time stands still. A second is an hour, and an hour a day - and there's a never ending supply of things to be done, and never an end to each day. Hours spent in action with no correlation to my thoughts, which usually leads to even longer hours of correction and 're-action'. With my mind ten light years beyond my current position, more mistakes are made than not.

And then I find myself back in bed, and it begins again. Hours spent not in sleep, but in transfixed contemplation: again staring at the wall, again not seeing the wall...

My mind will not shut off. It runs day and night. I feel there are thing to be thought, things to be learned, things to discover, things to read: things that cannot happen in the hours of the day nor when chaos subsides...I feel and see and think and hear all these jumbled mismatched thoughts and I try desperately to put them aside. To place them in files or bags: to write them down, to scribble a note, to do anything and everything to keep them for later - to lay them down before the thought subsides: for it is foolish to think it will linger for long.

To find the balance between hours of creative thought and hours of actual labor has become my greatest challenge.

I tell people I'll be an author; spending a life publishing books. I tell people I'll be a wanderer; never laying rest to the world. I tell people I'll be an aider; helping those I can, and those I can't. I tell people I'll be a mother; 5 girls and a man by my side. I tell people I am a Latter-Day Saint; a Child of God, a Mormon.

I tell people over and over again all my hopes and dreams, all my wishes and desires...and then I go off and become those things.

But sometimes I forget the future. Sometimes I think in the now.
And sometimes I forget the now. Sometimes I think in the future.

Over and over and over again I find myself struggling for that happy medium, seeking for that equilibrium, searching for that peaceful middle.

So here I am, pondering away...looking for the beginning, yearning for an end, and getting lost in the middle.