When I became ill, I couldn't lift my laptop, so Marius bought me a new one that weighs about 700 g, which I can lift. I also couldn't negotiate the stairs very well, and once I was up and brushed as it were, I would come downstairs for the day, making climbing the stairs back up to my study almost impossible. Instead, I would use the dining table as a desk (and the sofa as a day bed) and gradually one of the side chairs accumulated lots of my study junk - papers and pencil cases and files and filled notebooks - so that now the dining area is permanently messy, and if we want to use the table, it requires twenty minutes of tidying up first.
I am far from well but much better than I have been, and I am able to climb the stairs relatively easily. I don't run up and down like I used to, but most days I will go up and down half a dozen times. Yet I am still stuck at the dining table (which isn't as comfortable or convenient) and I find myself very reluctant to move back upstairs.
It has occured to me that I might be suffering from some sort of performance anxiety - it was in the study that I wrote most of my brilliant novel, the one I am now struggling to face editing - and fear of finding out that the novel is in fact rubbish, or unmanageable, and that I can't write worth a bean, might be what is keeping me downstairs, away from serious work.
So it sits, unused.
The books unconsulted.
Any advice?
v
11 comments:
comments test. couldn't get comments on your other blog to srick! But I did read and like it... and it caused me to reflect on the motive behind my own comedy writing!
Real problems on blogger at the moment - I post comments to all my favourite people and they just keep telling me I am not logged in.
I understand this entirely ... you have the I can't work in a cluster free area syndrome - I haven't found the cure yet but once I do I will let you know.
My guess is that your intellectual confidence has been knocked as a result of your physical ill-health and will gradually return as you regain strength.
How about allocating one morning or afternoon a week to sitting in your study and doing stream of consciousness exercises? Okay, that's probably a daft idea.
Go through your archived material and amaze yourself at your creativity (what I've read amazes me!)
Leave your almost-finished work to simmer in the background and start something new - a humourist's guide to upping sticks and moving to 'far-away places with strange-sounding names' would be most interesting.
you may have to re-nest in this space. by that i mean, sort out things, throw away, re-arrange, bring in some fresh flowers, some music (my priorities), maybe a comfortable chair that is away from the desk where you can just sit, stare out the window, that doesnt insist on work?
think of it as a reclamation project, reclaiming your writerly self.
good luck! (i empathize; at the moment, my "room of my own" is inaccessible...)
Thank you for your suggestions.
Susab, I am still unable to comment on your blog. Could you add a profile of name/url or anonymous - they work on other peoples?
Best wishes
Isabel
Sorry, Susan
i'll try that. i had been stalked for awhile (ex-wife of man i live with; not a fun experience), so i may have disallowed the "anonymous" option. but i'll look into it, isabel. i'd like you to be able to comment!
have you tried adding my blog to those you follow? maybe they use that as a filter? (i know you are pictured on my blog as a follower, however...)
what happens when you try to comment? as noted, i am nervous about allowing anonymous...but it's easy enough to just open a blog if you really want to annoy me; i'm not referring to you, i mean anyone malicious. so...if we can't figure this out, i will allow anonymous, ok?
In blog-hopping this morning, I was offered words from Pema Chodron on fear, how we are never told NOT to run from it. I have yet to become agile at allowing it, stepping closer. Might it be your fear about the novel that keeps you downstairs? We are victimized by our hectoring minds.
pema rocks, marylinn.
Hello ... I agree with much that was said here. Especially the commentary regarding the effects of illness upon creativity, psyche et al. I am just coming out of a nearly two year period of illness (six months of which kept me bed-bound) I did not write a thing, could not concentrate well enough to read, could't smell or taste ... yuck, it was no fun. I say go back upstairs to the place you want to be. I live in my library, I couldn't stand not being there. Ha! I just did something really stupid. Built a deck and a master bath on the third floor and I am moving back up there after 20 years. I will be 65 and ought to be looking for a single floored residence.
You have said that you have lost all of your followers. But I can see them upon your blog or perhaps even blogs. I know that I have been unable to comment on Word Press blogs for a few days which I find rather annoying. Well, good luck to you ... and beautiful Ming.
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