It's what I need to do in the immediate.As you can see it just about doubles the entire history of the first three Ages of Middle Earth. Unlike the last time I lamented about being behind, I'm not working on something-not really at least. And like Barad-dûr it looms over my shoulder with everything I do today.
I'm a piler. A colleague that I worked with in my classroom years ago noticed it and found it incredibly frustrating since she was so organized and a micromanager. We're talking planning a class almost down to the second. However by the end of her time working with me, she was using piles. I'm not saying it efficient and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but it mostly works for me. I think that it's purely psychological with me. A pile can be visibly measured. You can always see how much you have left and how much you've gotten done. It's a decent metric. I also know that piles are the domain of your average hoarder and that scares me. However, I am a notorious purger. I can't help but wonder how many smart ideas and notions I've thrown out in the midst of a purge.
To be fair, in that pile are three print outs of LABORS, PICTURE and what's done of the present project, which has stalled. I hate the title and that's honestly part of the problem. A project isn't real for me until it has a name that I like. It needs something else, though I'm not sure what exactly it needs. I need to give it a once through, just for continuity sake. LABORS had a rewrite request that I sort of put on the back burner because said agent was between agencies and that's not the case anymore. There's a blog post about my own self-destructive tendencies but this isn't it. I decided now is as good a time as any to dig in. Plus, getting some distance from the present project might be good for me. PICTURE needs attention to. I think PICTURE has loads of potential and is a good story, but I need to do some research first.
I frequently mention doing research and I'm not always talking about the way we think of research, even though there is some of that in what I am talking about. I generally don't read or write thrillers and I feel like I need to study up on the genre to grasp what I need to do for the story to really work. I also have a new. "younger"idea that's been niggling at the back of my brain that I want to get to. But right now the Barad-dûr stands in the way. It needs to come down before I can do anything else. My students need these papers back for their next project and I'm leaving to go out of town tomorrow night. The heat is on.
Maybe instead of writing this, I could've worked on the pile. Nah, this was a better use of my time. Tonight, like Sam and Frodo, I'll attempt to destroy this Barad-dûr. Instead of destroying a ring, I'm going to take it down brick by brick or paper by paper.
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