The Space Between the Notes

You wait for a day off (aside from a regular weekend) and when it arrives, you’re immobilized. The plan you had in mind suddenly appears less appealing than catching up on F***book or baking cookies or reruns of Big Bang Theory on the comedy network.

Help is on the way.

A year after buying it, I finally started reading David Usher’s Let the Elephants Run. It’s an easy read: concepts are presented as sound bites and anecdotes from his own life—I love hearing how my idols’ process works—and, yes, there are exercises (none of which I’ve done … yet) but the primary takeaway so far has been the paradoxical pairing required for successful creativity:

Freedom and Structure.

Freedom to imagine and structure in which to develop what you’ve imagined.

It’s not news that my problem, er, challenge, is always structure. More often than not, my imagination runs me, a state in which I am blissfully content to remain, often to the detriment of any ideas that may arise from my imaginings. Follow through is the perennial bugaboo for writer Ru.

But this isn’t a post about self-recrimination. It’s about reaffirming my commitment to creativity, to my characters and ideas and wordsmithing skills. It’s about my commitment to me.

I love to write, so I am taking the next few days to reconnect with the written word. Remarkably, this involves actions other than writing itself. I’m also eager to take care of myself, my environment and my former house elf, but performing these small tasks outside the writing room will benefit my creative self by providing space in which to mull over and resolve plot issues.

“Music is made in the space between the notes.”

I’ve forgotten who said this, but it rings true for me and therefore must be true for any artistic endeavour, no matter what the medium. So off I go to make music. I can already hear the chorus …