Recovering the creative mind…

I’m still wandering through the post-concussion wilderness…I highly recommend against hitting your head on a steering wheel, it is definitely NO GOOD for creativity or really for anything at all.

So, the accident occurred like FOUR MONTHS AGO and STILL continues to have ripples throughout my life. The headaches have improved, or more accurately been forcibly improved by way of prescriptions that have had other effects; the jury’s still out on whether they’re a net positive. But at least I can think and do stuff more often.

The “back to work” attempts have not been easy, at times like herding cats, other times like racing slugs, and sometimes like struggling to remember a really tricky calculus formula from high school and the page of the text book it was on and the date you talked about it in class and the doodle you doodled in the margin of your notebook but you didn’t even take calc until college.

And sometimes you simply can’t think of the word “roundup” until you say “downpour.”

And then once in a while it’s VERY suddenly like a nasty clump of hair gets cleared completely out the clogged pipe, and you didn’t turn the main water off so you get a face full of you don’t even want to know what.

Last week, after a week on a new migraine med, I got a few face fulls of I’m still not sure what.

After a REALLY long and pretty crappy day, my brain gave me several very large pieces of a story (main character, first line prompt, world, story arc) in a very very very very short amount of time – the space of opening a few cans of cat food – think a 33 rpm record played at 78 rpm. Well, probably a lot faster. Like CD ROM speed, probably. 

I jotted that stuff down once the cats were fed, but apparently, my brain was not done. So I’ll give you a summary with only very few and very mild embellishments to enhance comic effect – 

AN ACTUAL CONVERSATION WITH MY BRAIN FROM ONE NIGHT LAST WEEK:

ME: Aaaaaah, sleep.

BRAIN: Story! Story story story story story story. Story story story story story story story story story story story story story story. Story story story story story story. Story story story story story story story story! Story story story story story story story story story story story story story.

ME: Uuhhhhh, sleep?

BRAIN: Story story story! Story story story story story story story story story story story story. story story story story story. Story story story story story. Story story story story story story story. Story story story story story story story story story.

ME: Look, brain. You just spent the entire day telling me how tired & crappy you felt. Hell, you’re still telling me how tired and crappy you feel.

BRAIN: Story. Story story ––

ME: Brain! Can we just get some sleep? It’s time to sleep, we can pick this up in the morning.

BRAIN: Story story stooooryyyy…

ME. We’re going to sleep!

BRAIN: … … … … … **PAIN!!**

ME: OW! What the f*ck?

BRAIN: STORY.

ME: SERIOUSLY?!

BRAIN: S.T.O.R.Y.

ME: ………

BRAIN: ………

ME: ………

BRAIN: ……… *warning pain!*

ME: (grumpily grabs notebook & jots down notes to shut brain up)

BRAIN: (45 minutes later) *yawn* storeee… zzzzzz……

ME: ………

THE NEXT DAY WENT SOMETHING LIKE THIS:

BRAIN: Story story story story story. Story story story story story story. Story story story story story story story story story story. Story story story story story story story story story.

ME: (typing) Awesome!

BRAIN: Story story story story story story story story story story. Story story story story story. Story story story story story. Story story story story story story story. Story story story story story story story story story story story story.

ME: (typing) Cool!

BRAIN: Whoosh!

ME: Yay! Can I go shower now?

BRAIN: Uuhhhh, sure!

(me, showering)

BRAIN: Story story story story story. Story story story story story story. Story story story story story story story story.

ME: Can I just –– (putting noxema face cream in my hair)

BRAIN: Story story story story story story story story story story story story story story. Story story story story story story story story story story story.

ME: I mean – (washing my face with shampoo)

BRAIN: Story story story story story story story story story story story story story. Story story story story story. Story story story story story story story. Story story story story story. Story story story story story story story story story.

ME: (getting out of shower) Aren’t you even hungry?

BRAIN: Yah! Food good! Go make some! Story story story story story story story story story ––

I don’t know what will come of it. I’m expecting a 6000-8000 word short story. I’ve got a lot of ugly first-draft work in there, and I’m in the process of sculpting it into something readable and coherent.

It made me wonder if that’s what it’s like for creative people who rely on … substances to get their game on. And made me really really really really hope my brain will at some point soon no longer need prescriptions and get back to the way it used to be.

Every time I post something here, I have another topic half written that I can’t imagine not having ready to go in a week or two, but then I don’t even know what happens. I can’t make any promises, but I am trying.