Talk About Mixed Metaphors!

I'm too full of inspiration with too little perspiration. Too many new ideas, too many wishful thinkings, and not enough doing.

It's very tempting to just let my muse take me away (maybe I should name her Calgon?). It isn't every month when I find new stories lurking behind every channel I surf past, under the weeds I'm pulling from the hedge row, or in the latest book I'm reading. To carrying on with Kami's metaphor, I could be planting the seeds today that will be blooming into developed stories by summer and harvesting novels by fall.

The truth is, I'm still new enough to novel writing that I haven't completed learned the best rhythms for my work. Oh, the daily stuff changes every month or two, depending on several outside influences, but the rhythm of an entire work year?

It's rather like a school year or a business year, in a lot of ways. There are big goals to accomplish (graduating to the next grade, coming in under budget and above sale projections). There are seasonal goals (semester exams, quarterly P&L reports). There are the monthly and weekly goals (paper due, inventory to order). And there are the daily goals (read chapter three, meeting at four).

I think well in those terms, and lately I've been thinking more in another. Gardening (to keep continuing Kami's metaphor). And facing an upcoming spring has me wanting to create more than harvest, to build and design more than weed and water.

I'm not big on fighting against my instincts. I trust my instincts, most of the time (when chocolate or pastries aren't involved). But I know that I have some procrastination issues (haven't gotten around the fixing those). So is this instincts talking or procrastination? A little of both? Neither?

I'm leaning toward the former. If this were another time of the year, when the daffodils and anemones weren't breaking through the ground, I might worry. But this feels like the time to create. To fill my beds with as many seeds as I can coax into seedlings. And to remember that I have to stay on top of the weeding and the watering all the same if I don't want to lose everything I've created.

Calgon, take me away.