We’re winding down towards the holiday break here at TKZ. As Clare wrote in her post yesterday, this time of year offers an opportunity for taking stock and reflection.
In my case, the holidays have offered yet another opportunity for distraction.
Take yesterday, for example. We had a couple of gigantic structure fires in downtown Los Angeles. Here’s something to know about LA County: it’s a land of wildfires, not structure fires. Los Angelenos think nothing of ten thousand acres of chaparral getting charred to a crisp when the Santa Anas blow. But urban structure fires? They’re almost unheard of. And these fires were big, the biggest in recent memory. One of the fires actually shut down a couple of freeways! Freeway closures cause chaos in LA faster than a quarter inch of rain.
Both fires are considered suspicious. The larger of the two blazes destroyed a much-reviled building that was under construction downtown.
Magniloquently named “Da Vinci” (and dubbed “Terrible Fauxtalian Fortress” by CurbedLA), the apartment complex is the latest architectural project being built by a developer who is widely criticized for blighting LA’s downtown renewal with overpriced projects designed with dubious taste.
And then of course we have a local version of the national protests that are going on. The Los Angeles protests, which haven’t been getting much news coverage outside the region, have a particular characteristic. Night after night, groups of protesters have tried to get onto a freeway in order to stage a “die in”. They move methodically in groups along a chosen stretch of onramps and offramps, dodging police. Looking for a weak spot.
I ‘ve been listening to my police scanner at night, following the cat-and-mouse game between protesters and police. And I’ve been trying to figure out whether the downtown fires could have been started by a design critic, or a protester. If the fires are in any way connected to political unrest, it would signify that LA has turned a page since the Rodney King riots. Back then, people attacked and burned their own neighborhoods. Since that time, there’s been much discussion about acting smarter, about attacking wealthier targets. I try to decipher cryptic messages on Twitter, messages that seem to be guiding people where to go, what to do to express their rage.
Yeah, I know. Everything I’ve talked about here is a poor excuse for not writing the last few days. But, hey. It’s the best excuse I have.
How about you? Is it harder to work these days? Do you soldier through it, or give it up for the holidays, along with your diet?
Happy Holidays!
Kathryn, from Thanksgiving through New Years, my writing output drops. For years, I’ve considered there to be only 11 months to write. This time of year, it’s full of distractions, and hard for me to stay on track.
That makes me feel better, Joe! And as you can see by the nature of my distractions, they’re independent of the holiday season. But I’ll blame them on it anyway!
Kathryn, I know the feeling. I’ve been distracted for two months. I won’t bore you with my list of excuses.
As I read your response to the distractions, especially following the cat and mouse game between the protesters and the police, I thought, “Wow, this is interesting stuff. Could this be material used in a plot for a new book?”
One of my distractions is visiting my father in a dementia unit of one of our extended care facilities. This takes at least an hour out of the middle of the day, twice a week, my only days off. I became increasingly frustrated with losing time from writing, then I decided to start a journal. Each patient in the unit has a section where I record the unusual behavior of people whose logic and cognitive abilities have gradually eroded away. It hasn’t ended my frustration entirely, but it has helped.
I know…life, lemons, and lemonade. But maybe the material will be useful someday. And in the meantime, I’m not just distracted, I’m doing research.
I feel your pain, Steve. I lost both my parents to dementia. Visits to them were beyond difficult. It was because of a surrealistic conversation with my mother that I wrote my book Touching Madness, where the main character suffers from psychotic schizophrenia. So yeah, lemons, lemonade.
Kathryn, winters are usually a distraction-free zone for me. Work invariably drops off. No mowing, weeding, watering, building, just the occasional snow shoveling. I have no excuse not to write, and I usually get lots done. But this year, I’m trying to finish some last-minute fence installation. It’s definitely cutting into my time and focus.
Kathy
Steve, I appreciate your thoughts about using the scanning for material. This means I can reclassify “wasting time” as “research”. Tra la! (And I empathize with you and KS on your visits with ailing family members. My mother-in law, who recently passed away, lived with us on hospice for the final stage of her life. It took a lot of patience to hold conversations).
For the first time in a while I have a strict book deadline. So strict I wake up in a sweat at 3 am after dreaming that I am writing BACKWARDS and the book has gone back to chapter 5. (Think “Memento” meets “Barton Fink.”)
The book is due Dec. 31. My editor says I can have maybe a week extension. After that, the pub date is pushed back. And that is the one thing you never never never want to happen to you as a writer.
Fear and terror are great motivators.
Kris, what’s the phrase? “There is no inspiration like the deadline”! (And Btw, sequential extensions are the birthright of all writers! 😉
Glad to know I’m not the only one who wakes up at 3 am because of a deadline. 🙂 Not that I really thought I was.
I think I’ve given up on most productive things these holidays!
I’m with you, Clare!
The past couple of years I found that I barely get much writing done over the winter. That is partly because I usually have a lot of recording contracts for audiobooks all winter. The other part is that I tend to sit about stewing over the story, writing little bits and pieces into an outline or synopsis, and piecemealing it together then all of a sudden come summer I am sitting out at a camp fire by my RV or lying in my hammock in my back yard and the story that has been stewing for the past 10 months boils over and comes alive.
That actually sounds like a productive process, Basil–thanks for sharing!
Kathryn, Nope, can’t get much done with all that is going on in South Alabama, so going to load up my kitty, my dog, and my computer and three or four changes of underwear and go to Saint Augustine. There write in the morning with a full pot of coffee and see the Christmas Lights at night.
we don’t need to make excuses at Christmas. Maybe take a brake and share some of that joy. Merry Christmas every body.
R.G., the only news I know from Alabama is the ascendancy of Roll Tide, lol. No excuses needed! Merry Christmas to you, and a Happy New Year!