Don’t look back

I already did

Lately, I’ve been happy to live in the now. The now of my novel — meaning, whatever chapter I’m thinking about and working on, that’s it. No looking back. No looking forward. It’s been an exercise in making decisions. Being a foreman to my story. A triage nurse. A restaurant expediter. Forget anything else, what needs to happen now based on the outcome I am writing towards?

It’d be a simple task for some. Make a decision and carry it out until it’s done. Don’t think too much. Lizard brain.

But my brain tends to simmer in a constant state of low-grade anxiety. What else could I be addressing here? What opportunities for efficiency am I missing? Did I already set this up perfectly with perfect dialogue?

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I hate how not chill it is upstairs for me sometimes. I’ve gotten professional feedback that I’m so calm in the face of stress. When I’ve heard this, I’ve given a little smile. What are these people talking about? They simply cannot see the frenzied pinging off padded walls that is going on inside my head behind whatever chill face I might be making. A few can, for sure. But enough are taken in by whatever blank expression is fronting the frenzy.

It was nice to moonlight in the peace of the now for a while, but this week the whiff of frenzy returned. I came to a point between two characters that led me to look back at their last interaction, which necessitated that I got back to the last one before that and then the one before that and oh, what had happened with these other two folks in the meantime that had influenced the two characters I initially was curious about?

Doom.

Why did I look? I’d agreed with myself that I would not, that is was useful to make gut calls in the “now” of the chapter and tidy the rest up later. And that was useful and I did it for so long (for me!) and so well that I didn’t see the folly of innocently pulling at this little thread that quickly landed me in a heap of sadness.

Not me by next week, I hope (Mishal Ibrahim on Unsplash)

I’m still wrestling with it. Going back and forth between making the blind gut decisions in the “now” and scrolling back to the “before” to see where a bit of seasoning might be helpful with my new knowledge of the future. It’s messy when I’d been enjoying so much smooth compartmentalization for a bit, but I haven’t frozen. So that’s nice.

Week 180: Ignorance was bliss

Some everyday: No

Words: Some.

See you next week.