Friday, February 27, 2009

Elbow Grease


Yesterday I spent most of my time working on a new story. It's the longest piece I've ever done in one fell swoop. It was mentally exhausting, but in a very good way. 

Today I need to leave it sit and ripen and so I'm doing physical things like rearranging bookshelves - something I've been meaning to do for a couple of months. 

I love doing heavy manual labor jobs. Am famous for doing things the hard way, like turning over the soil in my garden with a shovel rather than a tiller (okay, we have used one to break ground). This year I'm hoping to build myself a tiny writing cabin not too far from the tree here - a yellow birch - we've named it "elbow tree." 

So, time to get my ass away from this computer for a bit.

Happy Friday!

6 comments:

Marina said...

Hey, that's kind of a sexy tree there, Robin! Kind of like Nikki M's tree porn! And - a writing hut - that would be really cool!

Congratulations on your story! I'm jealous - gotta find some time to get a few longer pieces finished and out the door.

Heidi Champa said...

I do the same thing with my stories, I always have to let the sit for a while and then I come back to them.

That is funny, I just did some heavy lifting myself. So much for my day off!!

Neve Black said...

Congratulations on completing your story, Robin.

It's good to let the story marinate in its own juices for awhile. You can always go back and add a sprinkling of this or that later. :-)

Erobintica said...

Marina, thanks. It's funny, now that I'm doing this blog I can think of all sorts of fun stuff to take pictures of.

Soon I will print it out so I can reread it tonight - almost 24 hours rest. We'll see.

Heidi - I took some time off from rearranging to go to Trader Joe's, hahaha - of course my grocery bags probably would be considered heavy lifting.

Neve - it'll be interesting - I already know one thing I want to change, but I'm resisting the urge until later.

Craig Sorensen said...

All these sexy trees. My trees are very boring. Damn.

I like doing some hard work too, to clear my head. I think that backing away from a story is an essential element in its development. Like a fine wine.

When pressed, I can finish a story quickly, but I always feel better when I have a few weeks to mull it over.

And to your later comment about having the answer...sometimes you'll be convinced you have it figured out, but after you sleep on it, you find you were wrong, or find you only had part of the answer.

At least I do.

Happy writing!

Erobintica said...

Hi Craig,

Friday night on the blogs. Actually I'm relishing not having to do the dishes right now - hubby & son are.

Go look at those trees a little closer - you'll find something interesting. ;-)

I've decided not to look at my story tonight - I'll wait till tomorrow. It's sort of torture though.