PRODUCTIVITY

Today I feel productive, self manifesting, empowered. Yesterday I got a lot done, but by this time of the day the flow had plugged up somewhere. I think the difference is that today I created something that never existed before: a new short story. I actually have a clean sheet of paper with symbols all over it that tell a snippet in a (fictional) character's life. A revelation of sorts, and the reader gets to share it.

It started out as an "assignment" for a writing class populated by folks my age at the University who aren't interested in grades, who are interested in learning. We were to take a scene we were familiar with, and add a character who was as unlike us as possible. (Away with memoir!) My little imagination started with sun on a Persian rug, a sleeping dog, and a sleeping man. From there an entirely new nano-universe manifested in less than two hours. Does it work? Hey, it's got a ways to go. When I reread it in a few days the phrases and paragraphs will want to be moved to be more concise, to convey the exact impression...but for now? Yeah, it works!

Productivity isn't all about producing! Yesterday I did laundry, changed a bed, vacuumed, cooked a meal, watered plants, and wrote a bunch of little things on the computer. None of it particularly NEW. And none of it found me on my edge wondering what would happen with the next word, the next phrase. I've been doing all the rest of that stuff for forty five years, after all. But James, sleeping on the couch, was a unique, undisturbed being that I was bringing to life. Did I know he was a pianist? Not when I described his beard. Did I think I'd watch him come to a new place in his musical life? Nope, not till the last two hundred words! Did I imagine the companionship his Collie and he had established in his orderly life? Not till she licked his face, and he didn't get upset!

Sometimes life pales beside the creative moment, a mere glass of water beside a tumbling waterfall. What risk is there in loading a dishwasher? But the risk of writing oneself into a box canyon is very real; and the sense of frustration when the character wants to do something different than I do (the writer), that's life on the edge.

I am not so manic as to wish to live on that edge all the time. The routine of housework definitely grounds me and offers its intimacy and sense of accomplishment. But today it can all wait. When I leave home on errands it will be with a fresh sense of purpose and capability. I'll carry a Collie and a pianist like good friends with me, and I'll be on the prowl for the next opportunity to make a new life--oh! I mean, short story!