The Writing Trance

I managed to wake up in a trance and keep in it long enough to dash off a chapter in Sally this morning. Writing often happens this way: you wake in a writing-set, dreamlike consciousness, and the trick is to keep in that mental space until you get the writing down. A myriad of things surround you as potential distraction. You have to keep focused, stay in the trance, or the job is going to be more tedious, the ride more bumpy, and everything will take longer. This is why living alone is so good for a writer. Not so good for a life, but good for a writer. The compromise, of course, is "a room of one's own," where the writer disappears and manages the writing trance without interruption.

Sally isn't going well, by the way. This book is going to be a real pain in the ass, but I'm determined to hang in. There are parts I like a lot. I just have to figure out how to fill the rest of the space with the same. But this draft is a bumpy ride and I think the draft itself will not be as close as my drafts sometimes are to where I actually want to be.

I think I'm going to get right on the new Maupassant libretto for my relief from Sally and back-burner the other prose projects until Sally is farther along. I have a month off after this term, and I'd love to be in good rhythm so I can get a lot done on it. I need this project to get fun again. Yes, writing a dark depressing book can be fun ha ha! It's the craft that makes it fun.

Yes, onward to a comic libretto! A fat man who hatches chickens! Just what I need.

P.S. I finished the new poem but don't think much of it.