Getting My Groove Back

The day job included some grunt work last week as well as working with invoices that translated to thousands of dollars and require monastic focus to make sure no details are missed when finalizing each step of the process.

Some people find the fact of a day job to the very description above a creativity killer. In my case, it’s a means to an end (it pays the rent, for the most part). Last week, it created an indirect funnel for creativity.

Work itself was not the inspiration, mind you. Being at work and having to adjust to both projects to complete them led me to the path of inspiration.

The grunt work required no intellectual capacity, it was automaton work. I can do that and do it like a robot! If you break it down something, a production line style, you can rely on muscle memory to move from step to step and create a rhythm – so that when you deviate from the rhythm, you can stop, back it up, and fix whatever went wrong.

How does this help creativity? It frees your brain to wander any fantastic realm it wants to inhabit.

Some would use this freedom (from reality and responsibilities) to push the envelope on repressed sexiness. Some would use the opportunity to imagine comebacks to situations they’d lost control of earlier in life. Some can fantasize about things they may not yet have found the courage to do in real life.

But to build these mindscapes in which to operate and manage these reveries, one must be in the right state of mind: It’s a studied meditation of sorts.

For me music sets the mood. It can relax you, it can evoke color, texture, flavor, and it can suggest so much more. To me music is tied to specific memories and emotions and these affect the stories and landscapes in which these stories exist.

Music may also suggest dance, and in turn also affect how the characters interact.

It was music that took me out of the mud and propelled me to write two stories last week.

They are unrelated short stories, and the first is awfully dark. Content is not the object, but that I was able to sit and knock out a couple of short stories.

The second is well-rounded; the first is a rough draft. Ultimately it’s the simple act of writing that, the facility of having words follow other words, sentences turn into paragraphs; characters speaking to others and dialogue flowing; things happening…

It was the creative kick, after weeks focused simply on getting well and getting back to normal.

There are only a couple of stories and there is no particular project plans for it. I wrote. The Muse hasn’t left me. (I need to get back into my RPG but that has been a little more challenging.)

Now, to create a routine until writing feels instinctual again. 

It was a song that got me started on Because She Was A Woman. So, let the music play!