Writing: Ease and Impossibility

I’ve written before about the struggles of writing in what is a rough time for everyone, let alone some of the problems my family has dealt with recently. Add to that since then that I’ve been living through a home remodel: this has been a very non conducive time for writing indeed. 

That said, I’ve been getting a lot done more recently. Partially I’ve discovered that the power tools being used in the background are a kind of white noise I can tune out, to some small extent it makes up for the complete lack of schedule and routine. 

What I’ve been thinking about lately though is this: there’s a strange fine line between not being able to write and writing quite a lot. 

Some of it is just switching on the word processor and making it happen. Certainly it’s all too easy to give oneself the easy out of “it’s not happening today, no need to try.” Waiting to write until I’m feeling inspired is a sure way to never accomplish anything. 

But on the flip side of that there are days when I turn on the word processor and stare at the page and really get nothing at all done. And those days feel as terrible as the days where I made no effort, worse, because on the days when I made no effort I would likely have accomplished something else, maybe something reading a book or watching a tv show that would have led to me reconsidering words on the page and getting something productive done. 

I wish there were some way to explain it, some way for me to understand what causes that difference. Why is it that some days I can’t get anything done, others it’s just as easy as trying. (This is of course saying it’s easy to write words, no guarantee of quality, that’s another matter entirely). I’ve had days of struggling with a scene, only to pick it up with only having an hour available and banging a reasonable draft of it out in half that time. Is that it? Is it at least partially that when I have less time available it forces me to get it done? I’m not sure, because in the old days when I had routine, I could spend a full day and get much more done, but now without routine, maybe it is the feeling of desperation that if I don’t get it done in the time allotted that is leading to this newfound productivity.