Writer’s Desk, 4/15

What’s happening at my computer desk? Glad you asked:

Out the window: Gray skies, gusting winds, rain and scudding clouds. Falling temperatures. A good day to stay inside. And write about stuff going on in a warm place.

On the desktop: Hold onto your chair, dear reader! The desktop is…relatively clean. (gasps of shock and wonder) Yes, I know–amazing. A couple notebooks hold…duh…notes. A pen and a few 3″ x 5″ cards are in a growing stack as I attempt to figure out the plotting/outline of the novel-in-progress. The computer, keyboard and mouse. And that’s it! Yay for clean!

Today’s Work-in-Progess: Make more 3″ x 5″ cards! I will transfer these to Scrivener when I’m done, but right now the thought of making them electronically and not being able to see them all at once just makes me antsy. That might make me a control-freak (or maybe not) but I’m not getting stopped by a lack of “visual stimulus” at this point, you know? Another good thing? They’re easy to move from the clean desk, to the living room floor, to the kitchen table. Well, so is the laptop, I guess–but that hardly seems like “vacation,” while this does, you know?

At this point, just getting ahead of “planning paralysis” is a step in the right direction. My cat vacuuming tendencies run rampant at this time; after all, I’m not involved in a daily word count kind of place, so who’s to say whether I met my daily goal or not. That’s how my wily procrastinator-brain likes to try derailing me. Watch me get those cards done today!

And Another Thing: Yesterday it was about 74°F, sweetly humid and breezy. I took a walk in that absolutely lovely weather, in the shady, boggy woods where I like to go. And I saw my first local snake! I can’t tell you how thrilled this made me. I’ve been missing snakes (yes, I’m strange, I know that and accept it), you see, so this felt like a little jolt of “home.” I didn’t get close enough to identify it (didn’t want to scare it away from good hunting grounds), and I’m unfamiliar with NJ snakes, so I don’t know what kind it was, but seeing this good-sized snake just made me smile.