There’s a well-used song lyric about playing poker — I’m sure you know it and may even find it to be an earworm after reading this. If so, sorry about that. But it does remind us of a number of truths. One is actually about poker, and that’s not my point. The other is about having self-awareness. Knowing when it’s time to get up and leave. When it is time to stop doing this and start doing that — whatever “that” is. As writers, we should know better. How many times have we looked at a blank screen and let a particular number of minutes (eons) pass before getting up to do the dishes or clean out a junk drawer or call mom to say hello and see if she needs anything just so we can feel productive? Or is that just me?

I like sitting at my desk and working. I don’t much like sitting at my desk and not working. It is my understanding that the great poly­math Isaac Asimov used to have a number of tables in his office and a typewriter and chair at each one. In each typewriter was a sheet of paper, with some specific project in midstream. The great one would move from chair to chair, facing a different typewriter with a different set of thoughts put to paper, and his mind would shift gears and pick up where he’d left off. I like to think that it was some combination of capabilities which allowed him to behave like that — something like non-linear flow of thoughts, and just a bit of code-breaking the scourge of writer’s block. As if Asimov could have a little author’s hiccup where he couldn’t think of a particular word or phrase, so he got up and walked over to continue doing the writing, only on something else completely. That is a very satisfying concept, and we should all take note.

Side note: sometimes I just can’t get going with anything. In situations like that I play word games. Like why is “etymology” so similar to “entomology”? “Stamped” just a simple auto-correct from “stampede”? Why is “hearty” defined similarly to “hardy”? What is the deal here? Do we need both of these words? What got lost in translation? It’s no wonder we make mistakes.

Anyhow, as I write this, I have two different other word files open. One has the beginnings of a poem, something that came to me while sitting in front of the television the other night, with the sound down and an open book in my lap. The notes and fragments I’ve got on paper (not really — but it sounds better than “in electrons on an otherwise blank piece of digital stock”) may or may not come together as something worth saving, putting away to see if it ferments into work worth polishing. The other is my novel WIP, begun in early May, where I’m slogging through chapter eighteen (out of what? who can say?) and my main character currently sits in a crowded student union of a large university and ponders his situation. It is very possible that this entire scene will be cut from the work in some rewrite, but it gives me hope that I will finish the draft if I just keep asking “and what happens next?” Are there any sentences too long by far? Don’t worry about that now. In fact, don’t worry about a thing, as the late champ Rocky Graziano said. Don’t know who Rocky Graziano is? Don’t worry about it. I don’t care about flow, or plot arc or if the dialogue moves the story along sufficiently or if I’ve had characters shrug or wink at each other too often. I don’t care if we’ve spent too long in the student union, sniffing cranberry vape and dirty laundry that doesn’t get cleaner just because it’s on the bottom of the pile of clothes, watching the cartoons on the big screen TV in the corner with the sound either turned down or the cavernous room just so loud with happy young-people-noise that my MC just cannot hear Tom squalling because Jerry caught his tail in the front door. That’s a lot, I know. Try and keep up, if you are able.

I cannot say that I am anything at all close to being in the same cosmos of a playing field as Asimov. That is no reason I cannot attempt to wield the tools that he used so effectively. Having a bad scribbling morning? Sure — go wash the dishes, they are starting to crust and will take twice as long to clean later. Call your mom. But also open a new file. Something you already started. Something blank and ready to go. Then go.

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