I won’t waste my time

pushing a river uphill

when I can sail it.

This poem is linked up to Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads’ Tuesday Platform.

Sometimes I am sure that my Corgi, Kit, thinks that his leash is so I don’t get lost following him around. I thought my first corgi, Faye, was stubborn, but Kit is an exemplar of the stubbornness corgis are legendary for. You see corgis can be prone to chubbiness without enough exercise. This was never a problem for Faye, who was happy to race around her usual path as fast as her stumpy legs could carry her. Kit however prefers to meander instead of race, picking out paths for reasons only known to himself. He will not walk if it is too late and he has already settled himself into one of his dog beds for the evening (he has one on each floor of the house). He loathes walking when it gets above 80, but adores snow and the cold.

So recently, I attempted to walk him when the snow from the most recent storm had mostly melted. Predictably, Kit was mopey, even though there was a chill in the air. At one point on the walk he found a patch of snow large enough to accommodate a pudgy corgi and refused to move.

Now I know this pattern. I could beg. I could tug on his leash. If I had more upper body strength I could even pick him up and move him back to the sidewalk or grass. He’d only go back to the snow pile, or find another one like it, and refuse to move until he had felt he had sufficiently indulged in it. I’d only prolong the walk if I tried rushing him before he was ready. So I gave him what he wanted. I won’t say he cheerfully gave up his beloved patch of snow, but when enough time passed (and I wasn’t tugging the leash), he got up and trotted home.

I have to admit, I’m not too dissimilar to my dog when it comes to writing sometimes. I finally had an idea for a story. I (thought I) was ready to start and outline. And I stared at my screen…

And stared…

And stared…

And played suduko…

And scrolled through Facebook…

And stared…

I discussed the issue with my writing buddy who suggested I just try word vomiting what I wanted to do with this new story. Don’t commit to anything as formal as an outline or a summary. Just play with throwing some sentences around, put it aside for a few days and revisit it.

Now this I liked! With no pressure to produce a perfect outline, or even a coherent plot I just drank some tea and jotted down ideas that started off a little all over the place, but ended up looking like a chapter by chapter break down. I went over it with my writing buddy and we poked the thing with sticks to see what wiggled with potential life and what lay there. It was now much easier to pull together an outline and a couple of character profiles from what I had.

In the book I am reading now, Hideyoshi and Rikyu by Nogami Yaeko, there is a passage about the way Oda Nobunaga would reward his warriors. “When Nobunaga was in power the warriors who served him had wanted to receive rare and prestigious tea utensils that had been imported from China as a reward for their brilliant achievements in war…The warriors felt deep chagrin if Nobunaga gave them a castle instead.”Sometimes to achieve things, you gotta go with what motivates you. Kit will get a full walk in if I let him have his break time in a pile of snow. And I can start a new novel if I let myself play with ideas and fall in love with writing characters first. Otherwise, I’ll end up wasting my time scrolling through social media (ooh… corgi video!)

 So dear Groovers, have you ever relied on some off-beat ways to get you more motivated to tackle a big task? Tell me all about it in the comments section, or just catch me up on what's doing with you this week. And as always if you have a cyberhome where you'd like to take the conversation a little deeper, talk to me about it in the comments and add your link there.