Pep Talk Now That It's Summer and I Have More Time

It's summer, but there's no real writing going on. Would it be helpful if I listed my difficulties? I feel scattered generally in that living paycheck to paycheck way but I mean my  thinking. I can only plan until the next short term fulfillment or task. I'm hiccuping instead of breathing. I'm continually getting snagged instead of skimming a surface lightly. Is it my age? Is it my impending birthday giving me a surface roil? Is it the sweating? Is it the influence of my job and how I flick through computer sites to distract myself/calm myself down? I have thought this before--that my job makes me think less well.

What's odd about my unwriting is that when I break through the skin of the poem and start fiddling with organs (OK--too many murder mystery books obviously), things seem to go well. So breaking through the skin continually. A better metaphor-- putting my head underwater where everything looks flaring and dreamy and I have to hold my breath. Dive deep.

Should I have a prompt chosen every week just in case? Should I keep an image notebook? This immediately appeals to me. It would be as if I'd be doing sketches. OK. Find suitable notebook. Look up mosaics online today and see how interested I am in that possible poem.

Learning to breathe underwater again.

Now We're Cooking with Gas!

My title was really only supposed to refer to how hot it is and how creativity can sometimes be sapped in the struggle to endure. But as soon as I typed it in the title box  it made me think of Sylvia Plath! (I don't think I need to explain why.) And somehow summer is mixing up with madness--the sound of her bees in the background growing louder and louder (as someone I know just complained about the cicadas).(Piping hot referring to just this kind of sizzle in the pan.) (Hot potato!--Where there's smoke!)

Maybe I should throw in "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" here which is not very useful re: summer since we're all trying to get into something  else--the shade, the AC, the swimming pool. Change of venue.

But with writing, we're trying to get into the zone which involves heat, combustion, the elements flying together to conflagrate. It's all about the interior. Come lightning, come thunder, come dizzying tyrannical rain of words. How to get into the landscape of the extreme and stay there for a while.

I think it's time for me to begin again, to get out the old notebook and jot down the dream from yesterday with its wonderful weird images (hedge clippers--really) and the notes from last week about mini-moons and see what I'm trying to tell myself. Time for commitment. Time to require. Time to revive great expectations of the self.