Hard to have icy death potential with no ice.

[mrissa]

I have the weirdest feeling that I can't finish a draft of The True Tale of Carter Hall until the hockey season starts. I have no rational basis for this. It's just this feeling I have.

What I'm wondering is: with all the other stuff that's gone on in my life this year, should I push on that and try to disprove it? Should I work on another novel until the season starts? Should I just write a metric buttload of short stories? Should I work on what I feel like working on, as I feel like working on it, and see what happens?

This thing where all the goals and deadlines are internal: it sometimes gets kind of weird. I am a great deal more comfortable when I'm working on a novel and therefore have a place where my work goes by default unless something else comes up. But I'm not sure if I should just go with that or try to keep my brain from falling into ruts. So I am thinking thinky thoughts about it.

(Note for non-hockey fans reading this: the Wild's season opener is September 15. So we're talking about what I am doing for less than a month, not for, like, six months or something.)

Maybe I should watch Whale Rider again and see if that helps. (My initial charmed reaction to that movie was, "They're like us! But the water's liquid!")

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I suspect this might be a time when ruts are useful; you can always extricate yourself later when the rest of the world is more stable. I vote for "have a novel to be working on as comfort default, but then actually work on what you feel like when you feel like it". That's assuming that you are comfortable working on multiple things at once, though, or at least one novel and one other thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. I am the queen of multiple projects at once.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Since I'm currently sick of being "in harness," so to speak, being able to run where I want for a month sounds pretty heavenly.

Plus, I think when my brain tells me things like "wait until hockey season," it's usually telling me that for a reason. Maybe not a good reason, but I have to believe the brain is going to fall in line with the program more quickly when the time comes. (Frequently, seasonal things seem to be "write the Advent story during Advent so you can observe your own anticipation of Christmas and the weather more closely.")

All of which you probably already know. I'm just talking to myself here. :)

[thoughtdancer.livejournal.com]

What fairmer said.

But you might be able to figure out more about why you need to wait for hockey season if you wrote up what you've been thinking about about hockey and hockey season. Maybe what you should be writing is a non-fiction rambler / essay (in the best sense of the word) about what is engaging about hockey season for you.

(Yeah, that sounds like a teacher talking. *shrugs* It's a thought though.)

[columbina.livejournal.com]

"They're like us! But the water's liquid!"

I'm sorry, this is going to make me chuckle all day.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, The True Tale of Carter Hall and related stories are what I've been thinking about hockey and hockey season. I don't do this one in essay form. It's all fiction for me. So if I do that, it will be tangled up with Tam and Janet and Carter and their stuff.

Which may be okay.