In the (Wrong Kind of) Flow

What I really love about writing is that wonderful state where all the neurons have had the time to connect and the right words jiggle together into something miraculous. Actually, anything can be like this--when you're somehow in the right state of mind, and conditions are favorable (no one yelling "wipe me!" for instance)-- suddenly you find yourself fully present and happy.

I get distracted easily, though.

There's lots of flies here. Darn them. They're landing on my legs while I try to write, or rubbing their little legs together on my pile of envelopes. Some of them are stripy and have big red eyes.

So I have discovered that killing flies is as much fun as writing, unfortunately perhaps more so. Last week I killed about twenty of them (the large, stripy uber-flies) with an old, paperback copy of "Statistics in Everyday Life." Once you kill a few, it's hard to stop. There's a strategy to it, almost a martial art. If you move too slow, they feel the movement of the air and escape. If they see your shadow, they're on to you. One good whack, and the luckier flies dance in the air until something in their little brains tells them to land again, and the process repeats. It's a dance.

Downstairs I have a standard-issue swatter, which I initially bought to use in an art project (along with the corn-holder nipples-to-be, but let's not discuss those) but is now my weapon of choice. I'm racking up the points. Land, spot, swat. Land, spot, swat.

I'm just about out of flies now, so I guess it's on to something else. If I'm really clever about it, maybe I can be distracted by chapter 1 of my novel.