Rust In The Brain

This writing stuff is hard. It’s obvious that I put my brain on energy conservation mode quite a few years ago. Knocking off the rust and getting it working again has been an interesting process the last few weeks. I frequently have all kinds of ideas for stories, a novel, and blog posts floating around in my head. Usually they appear when I’m nowhere near a computer.  By the time I sit down to write they’ve disappeared. Potentially discouraging, but I’m reminded of a favorite movie scene in “Get Shorty“. Bo Catlett is talking to Chili Palmer, trying to convince him that they could write a screenplay themselves. It’s simple according to Bo: “There’s nothin’ to know. You have an idea, you write down what you wanna say. Then you get somebody to add in the commas and shit where they belong, if you aren’t positive yourself. Maybe fix up the spelling where you have some tricky words… although I’ve seen scripts where I know words weren’t spelled right and there was hardly any commas in it at all. So I don’t think it’s too important. Anyway, you come to the last page you write in ‘Fade out’ and that’s the end, you’re done.”

I’m heartened by that because all the pesky grammar, commas and shit, tend to get in the way of my creative process. I know I have the next great novel in me if I could just stop worrying about punctuation and spelling and stuff.

Speaking of rust in the brain, I find it interesting that I’m less rusty when I first wake up in the morning. I know some folks struggle with basic motor functions like speech and movement until they’ve had multiple cups of coffee and an hour of warming up by the heater. Oddly I’ve never been that way. Be it writing or programming I tend to solve problems and come up with ideas when I sleep. When my eyes open in the morning my brain seems to be clear and sharp. I can’t count the number of times I’ve struggled for hours in the evening on a programing problem or how to fix or build something with little success. Go to bed and I’ll wake up with the answer. Hmmm, maybe this means I should start taking naps during the day? I think I’ll start that today.

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