April 8, 2010
I've been thinking a lot these last couple of days about muscle memory--you repeat a certain activity often enough, and your muscles memorize how to do it without you (meaning your brain) having to worry at all. That's how I found the "zone" while playing tennis and racquetball or practicing yoga.
Muscle memory must be why my body gravitates toward my laptop all day long, even when I'm trying to coax it to do other things, like get out in the garden and clean up last year's mess. I'm not consciously aware of wanting to work on Blind Love, but my muscles apparently haven't given up yet. I'm not quite sure what to do about this phenomenon. This very morning, after I shooed my cat off my keyboard, I had every intention of coming directly to my blog to write this entry. Instead, my fingers took me straight to Blind Love, and before I knew what had happened, I was staring at my chapter files.
Hmm, I thought. Maybe I should start something new. The problem is that, while my fingertips are quite willing, the space between my ears is completely empty. This brain-wipe always happens to me when I finish a project. My hard drive feels like it's been totally reformatted.
I got really scared the first few times this occurred. Suppose I had run out of ideas and overdrawn my creativity account--bet you didn't know you had one of those at the bank. Now I tell myself it's like when I used to get tennis elbow (though simple white space in your head isn't nearly as painful). I have to stop playing for a while. The trouble is--writing is so much more fun than tending to the other things on my growing "to-do" list, such as the aforementioned garden, overflowing cupboards and closets, etc.
Sigh. Maybe I'll get a second cup of coffee and curl up with my Kindle.
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