The Wall

Every now and again, every project I’ve ever worked on hits a wall. Story, painting, devotional, exercising, gardening, whatever. There comes a time when I’ve done everything I think I can do and haven’t a clue what to do next.

Usually, it’s just a matter of running the tank dry, then taking time to recharge it.

The method of recharging depends on where the shutdown has occurred. Quite often, if I’ve hit the wall with a painting, I’ll set it aside and work on writing, do some exercises or take a walk.

If the problem is with writing, spending time in the garden, mowing the lawn or doodling can be all that’s necessary to recharge.

If I hit the wall while walking or exercising, then it’s just a matter of gritting my teeth and pressing through the wall until I catch that second wind.

I hit a wall this past weekend and I hit it hard.

It had been looming large for ten days to two weeks before I finally hit it, but rather than take a serious break before the inevitable collision, I just kept pushing.

“Surely,” I told myself, “I can work through this. It’s not that big a problem! One more day is all it needs. One more day….”

I kept telling myself that until on Saturday, October 3, I made a plotting decision in the morning and changed direction 180 degrees in the afternoon.

At that point, that wall and I made intimate contact. The result? Total shut down in most things literary.

Sigh.

After much pondering, fretting and weighing alternatives, I finally decided to set that particular project aside for at least the rest of the weekend and work on other things until then. It’s not like I don’t have a good selection of Other Things.

Paintings to work on, drawings to do, a read through to start.

Ironically, within two hours of deciding not to think about The Wall or the project that led to The Wall, I found alternatives and ideas popping into my consciousness like stampeding buffalo. The most popular two thought words became “what if”.

What if the lead did this instead of that?

What if I reversed the roles of two characters?

What if I gave this character a little bit of additional personal angst?

I even came up with a really cool opening line that begged to be written with the promise of leading to a really cool opening paragraph.

It was a classic case of suddenly wanting something I’d told myself I couldn’t have.

My first inclination was to jot them all down and follow them to see where they went (which is about all you can do with stampeding buffalo, by the way).

But I resisted that urge. I did have other things to do, after all.

And I did promise myself to not work on that particular project for the rest of the weekend. I should keep promises made to myself as diligently as I keep promises made to others, right?

I had started the read through before all those ideas appeared, so what I did after they appeared was write this blog post, then do another chapter or two of read through.

Then I went to the kitchen and batter fried some squash.

If nothing else works, that will! Hm-mm! Grease!