heat wave

I have an unfinished post that is a week old, but I'm procrastinating looking up one word for it.  So I'm going to move on until I deprocrastinate on that looking up that word.

We're having a very short heat wave, but hot enough that it threw off my writing routine today.  I've fallen into a good rhythm of writing for a couple hours after breakfast, getting some exercise, than heading out to a cafe to write again for the afternoon.  I've set myself an aggressive deadline, so there's occasionally a third stint of writing in the evening.  It's probably the least rewarding piece of writing I've ever done, but also the longest.  The combination of an aggressive time frame and a strict routine seem to be about the only way I'll get it finished though, so that's the time management game of the moment.

But I was sluggish through my morning writing.  Then I drank about two gallons of water while exercising.  I took a shower and still felt sluggish.  Something was up, so I checked the weather.  It said 96.  I thought it was a cached value from the trip to Florida or something.  No, it was 96.  Being an east--coaster, the lack of humidity threw me off completely.

Unfortunately I don't handle heat well for mentally intense work, so writing went nowhere after that.  After getting through one paragraph in a half hour and reading that the heat wave would last two days, I decided to toss it aside til the temperature drops.  It's like day and night.  The last time this happened, a cold front blew through dramatically to end it, and it was like suddenly drinking three cups of coffee.  Experience tells me to wait, since that breath of fresh air will kick everything back into gear, and that'll probably get me caught up  in a day or two.

Now, about rhythm.  This more freeform, fun writing, just comes out fine.  I think it's the entertainment value of creating it, while the "day--job" writing requires concentration on many more things, most of which have nothing to do with the writing itself.  It's mostly concentration to say no to every distraction that calls out your name.  Like the top of the door that just might need to be dusted, because cleaning that would be more entertaining than the day job writing.  It really doesn't need dusted, and that next paragraph needs to be put together.  Do that about 600 more times and you get to be finished!

This entry is lacking in much real content, but it really much more of a tool, to make Friday's writing resume.  It's about rhythm.  A light-hearted stretch between longer, less fun stretches that make you want to do strange things like dust the top of the door.

I am not going to go dust the top of the door now.