Write Here, Today

This is it: WHIPS day. Decisions: what to write. What, of the many beginnings and middles floating around in my computer. The crunch. Whether to face a fresh blank screen--ground zero--or pick up yesterday's yarn-end and continue first-draft knitting. Or jump-cut to something adrift in a piece too sprawling to make it matter. Writing just because.

I've got the t-shirt: Dalhousie Tiger colours no reflection on writers but the football team--maybe the hockey team (some team, anyhow, whose members back when it began received the charitable donation of black and yellow uniforms, cast offs maybe from some theatrical production?). Writing the bald opposite of teamwork.

But, back to decisions. I'm thinking scenes. A chunk that's presently coming to a slow boil? (Nope, it's still too close to simmer mode.) A piece that's part of a present plateau? (Maybe, but only because it has humorous possibilities.) Pencil-scratchings dug out from last year's marathon which have gone past being stale to moldy.

No. It's got to be something new. Something the left brain can run with while the right brain rationalizes, lectures, explains. Leave the heart out of it, though. No time for crying on centre stage. But laughing, yes, though is it rude to laugh publicly at your own private jokes?

The writer as serious fool being foolishly serious.

All this enough to cause a serious blockage if pondered too long or too hard.

One laptop, two hands, one brain split six ways to Sunday, a big screen and a seriously amused audience.

Wish me luck.