Scrubbing Day

Like Pippi Longstocking, there comes a time when sometimes the most cheering feeling comes from domestic shenanigans. After a day of cleaning the fish tank, doing a boatload of laundry, taking fifty flights of stairs, healthy eating and a lot of walking, I... am just cool with being showered, lying in a clean bed, and letting my sore but satisfied body do nothing more the rest of the day.

My head is in my unnamed world, full of named cities and continents and struggling characters, but I look at my laptop across the room, laugh cynically and pull up my tablet to write a blog post instead.

Even though my NaNo draft has been sitting untouched since, I remember some of the little side scenes I haven't gotten to draft yet, playing at the frayed edges with secret laughter, sideways smiles, and furrowed brows as I feel the untouched structure strengthen without spoiling what it will be when I finally commit to typing its first draft into existence. I think of the Young Writer challenges, where I wrote scenes and notes that would never make the book (but might find a home in my blog someday), remembering how they decided more firmly what my characters would and wouldn't be.

I see the ending already written but still so distant, so lightly molded, as it will eventually be baked into its final form from the paths leading there that will decide its shape. I see my side stories more firmly resolving the character of the enigmatic asshole I wanted to create, not just through his own actions and circumstances, but the people around him as well. I see each of them as main characters and side characters, significant yet just as easily buried in the ever-stretching sands of time. They are the deserts that grow over time, the stubborn oases that keep such deserts from being unsurvivable wastelands, the cities lost and found and lost again. They are sentience and constance and vigilance and everything in between.

When their journey ends, I will still step into their stories and more besides, time and again, even as I move onto other projects. They may not stay so prominent in my memory, but pieces will resurface because faded is not forgotten. While some things are blurry as our minds build anew, some become the foundations of a greater curiosity the writer will explore over and over.

In my own future, there is hope in the long haul rather than any frustration for the present. I eschewed expectation, managed to create a place where I'm not discouraged from my goals.

Palate cleansed, I patiently coax my muse to return, to feel the natural flow, so I still write daily, regardless of whether it goes towards my goals. Sometimes I bleed on the pages, sometimes they keep my blood thrumming happily in my veins, words filling my lungs and releasing, coaxing my breath when the story leaves me breathless. I do not dare to dread the finite time, but grip it both firmly and gently, my unpredictable steed to guide. Whether it takes me all over the world and into old age, or it bucks and I break my neck, I know that this is life and I was never in control of anything but hope.

When I begin again, for hope at least speaks in whens not ifs, it is always time.