Left-brain censure!

Left and Right Hemispheres

I had a guitar lesson today. It is my favorite hour of the week. I play my lesson and receive feedback from my professor. Today, he was very complimentary, perhaps because my playing was better than usual. I had practiced every day except for one during the week. It showed.

During the lesson, while technical issues are being resolved (a loud truck goes by, dogs bark, the  sheet music falls to the floor because of sudden gust of wind, etc.) we take the moment to talk. Today I mentioned my writing. I asked his opinion about whether there is room for a poet and the poetry. He smiled, curious about where the question originated. I shared that I have a poet friend who insists she receives her poetry almost completely assembled. I, on the other hand, must work hard and revise often before I am satisfied even a simple blog entry can be shared. I don’t ever feel that a paragraph magically appears before me.

He told me that often his songs seem to appear in the ether for his taking. I posit that our minds are constantly thinking and if a song or poem “appears” it is because we have been formulating it and when we sense it is ready, we compose it. He smiled at that and reminded me that my thinking is in accordance with my left-brain thinking tendency. I laughed and since there were no noise or other issues, we continued with our excellent lesson.

Fridays are always such good days. My lesson is early, leaving the rest of the day to spend as I wish. I often hope to get a few paragraphs down in either my novel or on one of my blogs but I just as often get sidetracked by this and that and at the end of the day have very little to show. Today was a good day. I finished an important element in the novel, and I am writing in this blog. That constitutes a good day, good output

I read somewhere recently that writers (and I am one) have experienced and know everything they write about. I interpret that to mean that if we are writing about a child who has been beaten, perhaps we have not experienced actual beating but we have experienced something similar (a humiliation for example) which will allow us to empathize with our protagonist and write from that POV and be believable. I feel like I really need to work on getting out of my own way. I do edit my thoughts because I am often afraid that people will be able to recognize themselves in my stories. I have to learn to be less self-conscious. With my left-brain tendencies, it is not an easy task.

My output today has given me permission to begin my weekend early…now if only I had purchased a bottle of wine, it would be perfect. I guess it’s a good thing, I will save some of those calories for the weekend!