Writing in the moment.

I think maybe for a short time there I'd forgotten how much fun it is to be writing in the moment.  The feeling of creation, the living in a fictional dream, the sense of anticipation and curiosity, the soft lassitude of words and feelings and visions.

I've been pretty goal oriented.  Nothing wrong with that. That's how books get written.  It was probably a necessary attitude, and of course in the pursuit of that I was often 'in the moment' of writing, but maybe I wasn't appreciating it quite as much as I should.

This new book has no pressure on it.  I've got so much work completed that I could probably take a year or two off and -- other than making the necessary rewrites -- still put out a steady production of books.

So this one, I'm allowing myself an hour or two of just waiting for those first words to come.  No hurry.  And letting the fictional dreamstate slowly creep over me.  And taking plenty of pauses in-between paragraphs and sentences and words -- just letting it flow over me.  

Writing in the moment.

When I'm in this state it almost doesn't matter if the words are actually making it to paper.  That is, the words are coming, ready or not.  I don't need to worry about it.

The words come.

This morning, I was taking a shower when a sentence came to me.  "Okay, remember it," I told myself.

Getting out of the shower, another sentence came to me, from a different paragraph.  "Oh, hold on," I muttered.

I picked up the toothbrush and another sentence came to me, from another part of the same page I hadn't yet written.  I laid down the toothbrush, threw on my bathrobe, tracked down my computer and started writing.

Only when I was done did I go back and brush my teeth and get dressed.

The words come.  That I don't need worry about, at least so far.

So I'm letting them come as they come, and not pushing it, not setting any quotas, even letting myself NOT write if the words don't come naturally.

Just enjoying the moment.