Rhythms in Writing

Writing rhythm sounds like it should be smooth. Mine is all limpity–gumpity.

For several months I’ve been happily working on two projects, one complex, and the other smaller and simpler, a nice break from the first. Then a manuscript came home for editing, and I decided three projects at once is simply too many.

For the last few weeks I’ve been mostly focused on editing, with occasional breaks to return to my other worlds – but really, three at once? Too many, too many.

Now I’ve finished this round of editing, and cleared my desk of all the admin work begging for attention, and I’m ready to dive back into my two writing projects.

The oddity of the rhythm of writing is puzzling and yet interesting. It comes in fits and starts, responding to requests from publishers and my own internal clocks and family rhythms, in a pattern I cannot see but can only respond to.

It’s a bit like Calgary weather, always changing, always unpredictable. Instead of anticipating my first flowers, today I’m looking out at a sea of snow, after another dump yesterday. But I want to be pruning, I cry.

Between the erratic weather and the erratic writing patterns, you’d think I’d be used to adapting. But I keep feeling like I’m missing something, like there’s a rhythm I should be slipping into that would fit perfectly.

Perhaps it lies in simply flowing with what comes, and knowing that, just as spring inevitably follows winter, if I keep writing projects will get finished.

Maureen