Meredith Mansfield, Author

This last week has not been a very productive one. There are a couple of reasons for that.

On one hand, I’m just a little bit stuck on my current WIP. It’s a problem I anticipated, but it’s still a problem. THE BARD’S GIFT is about Astrid, a shy girl who finds that she’s been given the gift of storytelling–but the gift comes with a catch. Sometimes, even when it embarasses her or when people don’t want to listen to her, she’s compelled to tell a particular story. It’s potentially a very powerful gift, but not a very comfortable one.

Well, the problem with this story is that I have to put in those stories that she tells, which is almost like stopping the flow of the main story and writing a short story in the middle of it. That’s proving a little more difficult than I anticipated.

By preference, I’d like to have Astrid start with traditional stories, then maybe start finding that the story she has to tell has some variations from the traditional story, and then telling entirely new stories. This is an alternate history, so that means I need to find a traditional story from her culture (Norse or Icelandic) that fits with that point in the story. I have some more research to do. The books arrived yesterday.

Now, there are a couple of ways I could deal with this. I could just go around and come back to fill in the story. Or I could work on something else while I figure out the story Astrid needs to tell. I have a novella “The Music Box” that needs work before it’s ready for e-publishing and a short story “Apocalypse Cruise” that might be worth revisting because I might have figured out how to address a couple of its issues. The problem with that is that it typically takes me a day or two to really switch stories in my own head.

The other reason I’ve been having trouble with my writing this week is interruptions. They are, I think, going to turn out to be good interruptions, but I’m going to need to find a way to deal with them without losing productivity.

If you’ve ready my “About Me” page, you know that I take care of my mother, who has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. For several years, Mom attended an adult day care run by the Salvation Army and I had my writing time worked out around that. Last year, that day care closed and Mom had a one-week hospitalization. For someone like Mom, an event like that often results in a drop in functioning. Mom was no exception.

So, for the last year, I’ve been basically going it alone with Mom at home 24/7. Now, I’m deluged with potential help. Mom’s doctor switched her over to the home care portion of her HMO, which means nurses will come out to her instead of me having to try to get Mom back and forth to the doctor (not a smal task, believe me). Great. The home care people suggested that maybe she should be on hospice. In the last week, I’ve had the home care nurse, a social worker, another nurse to draw a test sample, and the hospice intake person out. And the hospice people are coming back today. I’ve not been very successful switching back and forth between these roles.

The house is a mess. I’ve never been a great housekeeper. It’s just not where my interests lie. I can always find something more interesting to do–like getting lost in my current story. But it finally does reach a point where I have to stop and deal with it. Those efforts usually run aground in the clutter.

But now I need to find some documentation. And so far, I haven’t been able to. (I have found some other things that I’d misplaced, but not what I’m looking for right now.) So, I’m going to have to start attacking the clutter and the semi-hidden stacks of paper lying around this house.

Looks like I’m going to have to make a plan. I might even *shudder* have to make a schedule.