..one sunny, comfortable and exceptionally fine Sunday morning outside in my usual writing spot, with the intent of soaking up the sun, the warmth, and the breeze, so as to mix them all together and apply them to my creativity in action.
And as usual, a multitude of things (including this post), conspired to prevent me from exercising my creativity in action. First and foremost, I refilled the bird feeder and refreshed the birdbath.
Major mistake.
Instead of getting some natural peace and quiet, which in this case would simply be the harmonious and melodic voices emanating from the mountain, I instead got the incessant squawking of a tiny group of bird arguing at the bird feeder. As for the birdbath, I watched a cardinal, and two robins take a rather noisy bath.
Yay.
Eventually things did quiet down enough for me to crack open my rough draft, briefly take a look at what I wrote this past Saturday (7/9) to finish a chapter (not an easy thing to do), make some edits, then turned to the previous chapter so that I could work on figuring out what I needed to do, which was lay the groundwork for one of the two climaxes.
However, if you think dealing with feathered friend interruptus is difficult, try dealing with people interruptus. And no, I'm not talking about the normal family/innocent bystander kind of people. I'm talking about the kind of people in which you always have to have an ear out for.
As some of you may know, I live between 2 group homes for the developmentally disabled. Due to the natural hyper-vigliance that is today's world, one has a tendency to be aware of possibly unnatural sounds coming from elsewhere. And you become acutely aware of those same sounds when you have one, lots of children in the neighborhood, and two, developmentally disabled people living in the neighborhood.
So when you start hearing screaming or the raising of those particular voices, you have a tendency to stop what you're doing and concentrate on whether or not the people connected to those voices are in trouble.
Sound really does carry here, so it becomes quite easy to figure out what's going on, and thus whether or not you should be concerned. Fortunately, there have been no incidents in which other steps had to be taken. Just the same, it does make it difficult at times to tune out your surroundings so that you can write.
Like I said, I cracked open my rough draft to do some writing, but once again fate intervened to prevent me from doing anything beyond writing this blog post.
Now I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm a bit weird when it comes to writing. I really don't mind listening to the natural sounds of the neighborhood and the mountain while I write. Call it my white noise, if you will. However, I do mind when people are in the general vicinity of me.
Like 2 yards.
When I write, I truly like to be alone. I don't like people being closer than 5 yards to me. Which means if I'm in my den, I'm comfortable with people being as close as the first floor to me. I'm not comfortable with people being in the same room with me. Even if I shut the door to my den, I still have problems.
At this point, I'm sure that you're able to figure out that someone is within the general vicinity of me. Which of course means that the only writing I've been able to do is this blog post.
Yay.
Not sure what kind of point I'm making with this post, or even if there is a point to begin with. I guess you can call this a random oriented type of tangential post that was designed to simply bloviate like a talking head on a vapid news program that deals in factoids, drama, hyperbole and a thesaurus.
In any event, this was a Writing Wednesday post. My name is G, and it's a given that I approve this string of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives and other types of grammar for your enjoyment.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
10 comments:
Go on, give me your best shot. I can take it. If I couldn't, I wouldn't have created this wonderful little blog that you decided to grace with your presence today.
About that comment moderation thingy: While yes, it does say up above I can take it, I only use it to prevent the occasional miscreant from leaving thoughtless and/or clueless comments.
So remember, all of your comments are greatly appreciated and all answers will be given that personal touch that you come to expect and enjoy.
G. B. Miller
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It's hard to concentrate when there is external noise like that. Your blog post reads well though!
ReplyDeleteThat condo below me always has renters in it and when I was back in college in 2003, there was a man down there who kept his pet bassett hound tied up outside during the day. It just howled and howled all day. I was trying to write a paper one day when I was at home and the howling was nonstop. I leaned over the railing and said, "Be quiet. OK???" Still the howling. I went down to pet it and it stopped for a minute or two. Finally - I sucked it up and had to block it out. :)
I think if I was very focused and working on something I'd prefer to not have people around me (or strange screams coming from the neighbor's) either... however, I am very used to being interrupted by little voices... 10 years of motherhood will do that to you!
ReplyDeleteps Is there a park you could go to?
We've got a lot of squabbling going on at our feeders too but our deck is far enough way so that I don't catch any of the blowback.
ReplyDelete"Mom! Mom!"
ReplyDeleteI'll take noisy birds over that!
I have to have complete silence when I write a blog post. I can't concentrate if the radio is on, or I can hear people in the background. Which appears to be most of the time at the moment! Roll on September when my kids return to school!
ReplyDeleteLynn: It's funny, but being able to block out noise/distractions was once a great attribute to have. When I used to bowl, I was always able to get a line because I was able to tolerate 40+ screaming kids at b-day parties.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the compliment about the post.
Extra O: Yeah, my kids (10 & 18) are about the only exception to my rule of privacy. I do have a park that I can go to, but I often run into the same problem of lots of people and lots of distractions.
Charles: The video of the birds that I posted here last week was the culmination of an entire morning/afternoon of monster blowback. Got so fed up with it that I needed to shoot that video in order to prove to myself that I wasn't losing it.
Mama Z: That would be close race in my household. Noisy birds or "Mom! Mom!"....hmmm....
Joe: It's a bit of a conundrum with me: I need people silence and a little natural noise to write, but to do anything else, music is a necessity.
one of my favorite replies to clients who ask how I am doing is, "The sun is shining, the birds are tweeting, and I don't have my bb gun, so not too good."
ReplyDeleteSometimes this bit of tastelessness gets a laugh, others it does not...
but either way, it is a preferable situation to trying to concentrate enough to write with unwelcome watchers. Ugh.
Darth: Cool reply. I usually have a long one that I flavor with sarcasm whenever I'm having an annoying moment.
ReplyDeleteI will concede that the only person I'll let watch me write is my daughter. But only a blog post and never anything else.
That would be totally distracting. I'm amazed you wrote anything.
ReplyDeleteR: It's funny, but I can write a blog post just about anywhere and with any kind of distraction.
ReplyDeletePark, work, outside in the front yard, you name the distraction, I wrote a blog post through it.
Blog posts are easy to do with any kind of distraction (at least for me). It's trying to write the other stuff that requires peace and quiet.