Creativity the Slow Way

Mindless Work and Blank Pages

I love mindless work. Lifting, shoveling, hauling, mowing. It gives me time and space to think, but enough distraction to not overthink. Usually that's when The Muse is around, chattering away about this and that. Helping me break thoughts apart into smaller, more manageable ones. I like my iPhone because I can take notes. And though I have voice to text, I usually type...and now that I think of it, I prefer my creative endeavors the slow way.

Originally I had intended to hire someone for bobcat work, figuring that getting the heavy lifting done in a few hours would save a lot of time. But looking back over the last 20 tons of gravel, and the big pile of dirt I moved by hand, it gave me time to gain confidence in my abilities. At first I was really nervous about getting the wall in the right place, making sure it was straight and level and not too deep nor shallow. But Once I dug part of the trench, I started to relax about that part. Then came the gravel bed. Same thing. Nervous at first, but relaxed. And finally the wall. I'd helped my husband with several, already, so I knew the drill. Level on all axes, and after a bit check the level with the 4ft level to see that I'm trending, set a string, to keep it straight. But this was me alone with the tools, and a Really Heavy Blocks...and dammit I was NOT going to ask for help. But I relaxed and it went great.

Next was filling the space behind the wall, and for most of this part, it's just been endless wheelbarrows of stone, which I placed deliberately, because I hadn't decided yet what the boundaries of the terrace were going to look like. So I got to spend some time playing with shape, size, and depth; I know there will be a fairy garden for the dottirs, but I hadn't made many more decisions beyond that. Had I done this the bobcat way, I'd have had no chance to play with these ideas. So I set the first stage of garden wall, and tomorrow will buy what I need for the second stage (it's a different kind of wall block, but these will be planters rather than gardens, so I needed a heavier duty wall material that locked together, much like the retaining wall. But lighter). As a result I'm happy. I didn't have to make the garden any particular size because it was dictated by gravel. I had time.

I don't know what it is about the process of typing that changes things. I suppose I can stop mid-sentence, think, delete, reroute. Get distracted and come back. Fix a sentence in the first paragraph (which I just did), and return to whatever thought I'm working on. Voice to text seems so linear to me. Like having a bobcat dump a bunch of words onto my page, that I have to sort and re-sort until I get it right. Typing is slow, but not too slow (hand writing is just delayed death). It lets me play with adjectives, or find ways to get around using adjectives (I believe in using adjectives responsibly, which means I end up being a fairly tight writer. Even this blogpost feels long to me, because I'm not really sure I"m saying anything at all).

And She's Gone

Working on the terrace has brought me great joy, however it leaves me nearly wordless at the end of the day. That makes me sad, because I'm not getting anywhere with my writing as a result; yes I'm spending precious time on this blog rather than my various projects, but actual creativity is a struggle at times like this. And at least I'm writing something. And I will get back to it. I find I miss my characters after a while.