september 4.

It's an unusual time for me to be working, since generally by this point of the day I've already spent half the day working on this and have moved on. The light feels wrong, but that's ok. There's something to learn in being able to work regardless of environment, and I'm much too fussy already with the 'mood' - this is good for me.

My driving factor right now is, strangely enough, the next story. I have images attaching themself to my thoughts like a cluttered pin board, moments and scenes - the girl in a dusty cathedral & a boy with clammy palms, one person's loss another's gain, dingy happy music and sterile silence - interrupting the moments and scenes I really should be focusing on NOW. It's great motivation, though, to tell this story to the best of my ability with the anticipation of the next.

Mind food right now...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEVa3jAaweE - infectious music does powerful things. Actually, loving it in its entirety:

When stuck at desk, always move to floor. One principle I've learnt this year that's stuck, and though these are ugly, they're mighty effective for messy scrawls while avoiding a demanding computer screen.

An hour and a half later and one problematic scene, the thorn in my side when tone and intended meaning collide and cause a fall-out, has been beaten (for now. Until tomorrow, when it needs beating again). There's a certain satisfaction in achieving something you thought impossible, and I need to learn that there's ALWAYS going to be those moments, those times of wanting to give up, give in, let go and go have a long indignant bath instead of trying (and yes, this won't be the first afternoon you consider quitting the course. You'll probably have the same brilliant idea next week. And the week after.)

The key for around 98% of people who put themselves through this exact same process, I'm beginning to learn, is not the posession of genius IQ points or some freak-of-nature knack for the elements of story (although that's definitely the case for some). It's persistence. Persisting through those moments of self-loathing despair, when all you're wishing is that these pages were in hard copy instead of digital format so the destruction process could be much more ferocious and send shreds of paper in every which direction. And more than that, it's persisting for the purpose. The love. The rush. The exhilaration of taking fragments of one mind and breaking them down and teasing them out into these people, who have their own voices, their own stories, their own struggles and their own joys. It's the love of the limitless possibility, the joy of taking one floating thought from a single moment in your day and expanding it into something that previously didn't exist. THAT'S what pushes you through when you're writing the same piece of dialogue for the fifteenth time, or when you delete three hours worth of work.

Now, just to remember that.