Today's work dilemma is the inability to remember early parts of the book and to make sure I'm not repeating myself.  Ever had that problem?

Oh, sure, I made a real time chart with the chapter chart and keep track of the events, but the brain feels as though everything's floating around and nothing's settling. 

Not to be punny, but it's very . . . unsettling.

So here's my solution, such as it is:  I just force myself to stay heads down in the mess until somehow it starts to register, starts to make sense.  I continue to keep track on my book chart--you know, the one with time of day, weather, events in the chapter, where the romance is at that point in the book, where the mystery is at that point--and then I simply hope.

Hope that doing the work will make it all come out.  Hope that the brain's not as flaccid and grey as it feels.  Hope.

Yeah.  Hope's good.

So.  What do you do?

Oh, boyohboyohboy.  What a strange day it's been.  A temperature drop from yesterday of almost 40 degrees, plunging us into quite cold and curl-up-in-front-of-a-fire mode.

Which I think I'll do after I finish the pages for today.

I'm at that point where it just feels like slogging through mud to get to the end.  I want to be the hare, racing along, zipping to the end, not the tortoise.

But, like the hare, I've gone off track while the tortoise has slowly and steadily plunked its feet down and crawled on.

My lesson for this month?

Be the tortoise, not the hare.

But, goodness to godness, Miz Agnes (as we say down home), I sure do want that zipping along in the breeze rush!

Nevertheless. . . . 

Today's fun soundtrack is sexy-hot Tim McGraw. Hoo, babee. I especially LOVE "Red Ragtop." It takes me back to the days of my youth.

Some writers can't write to music with lyrics.

I need the words in the background. They block out the other stuff going on in my head. I think perhaps I'm a bit weird--oh, what the hey, I KNOW I'm weird--in that I work best in my cocoon of noise all around me.

As long as no one talks to me. Or asks me for something. Or needs my help.

Noise is good.

Need is not.

The delightful weird of work.

In my case, anyway.

 Working today to the soundtrack of O Brother Where Art Thou.  For some reason this CD really works for me whether I'm doing the walk at the health club or working in my office.  The lyrics somehow lodge in my brain and conjure up images and ideas.  At the moment, "You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine" is playing and I remember singing that over and over on car rides with my little sister.

 If you've never heard the wonderful, haunting "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby" as sung by the ethereal voices of Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, and Gillian Welch, you must.  It'll send shivers up your spine.

I can play this CD over and over without tiring of it.  Nostalgia?  Maybe a a call to my southern roots.  Who knows?

And I loved the movie. 

A dear friend gave me a CD of music from Desperate Housewives.  I play that one over and over, too.  Hmmm.  I seem to have a repetitive thing going here.  This doesn't sound good!

Writing--man, some days the voices aren't there, are they? 

Or the energy isn't there.  Or the need to go to that place where you can hear the voices loudly and clearly, where they provide the energy, and you can just slide into the zone.

I thought I'd be energized and rarin' to go after Rob and Emily left, expected that their visit would just lift me up and keep me flying right into that zone.  But here's the thing.  I miss having them here, miss the coming and going, miss the noise--although they're both so quiet that "noise" isn't the right word!

So I'm wading back into the icy waters of work.  You know, edging in, dreading the cold shock, holding my breath.

And outside, oh, outside my window, there's this perfect day calling me to come out and smell it, breathe it in, bathe in its colors.

If I were a surgeon, I wouldn't be looking out my window, would I?  If I were still teaching, I'd be racing around the room checking all kinds of things out, boogieing along at ninety miles an hour instead of sighing gustily and wishing I were outside digging in the dirt.

Well.  Back to work, huh?  Yeah.  Back to work.  Maybe I should pull the shade down. 

But I didn't.

Should have.