It’s done, its off, my application to Clarion West is in the ether and there’s nothing else for it but a bit of the good old ‘sit back and wait’. My blog will now go back to it’s regularly scheduled programming: me talking about myself, trying to be funny, discussing books and complaining about people not being quiet enough on the quiet carriage (by the way, it’s been bad lately: what’s the use of a carriage of solitude if it is rarely respected?)
An accurate representation of me when two old women talk loudly about boring family concerns for an hour behind me on the quiet carriage. I have too much anger. (image via Rage Comics)
I thought that once I was done with this latest goal my brain might flatline for a while, kinda of void out after all the hard work I’d put in and I’d have a few weeks of staring blankly at the telly while I recovered. I planned to eat a lot of cookies, drink tea, maybe put on a few kilos. You know, really get into the spirit of mental recuperation.
Look at all those spare holes on my belt that I could be using…
But as I was walking to my car in the parking garage at the station yesterday, I was, for some reason, thinking about this episode of Four Corners that I watched a few weeks ago. The combination of the documentary in question and my immediate environment melded together into a little idea. Just a tiny seed, maybe with a little shoot of green peeking out of a split in the seams. But that’s enough. So instead of just sitting back and letting my brain go numb for a bit, I might instead relax and let this little idea grow. See what comes of it.
It’s reassuring to know it’s not just a fluke – that I’ve got it in me to make stories just for me, just because they are there, just because I can. I don’t need a goal or a deadline to keep writing them.
Now, if I could only find a train carriage that is endlessly silent for the forty-five minute trip home? Life would be complete.
Yay on the Clarion send-off! I’ll be feeling this way at the end of March, when all my novel re-writes are done and the Beta readers start in on it. Enjoy your exhale!