Quality Writing Time and the Monday Morning Commute

These two activities shouldn’t occupy the same sentence, much less the same time frame, but oddly enough I’m finding it to be a consistent pattern. With the help of a pot of coffee and no weekend appointments, Saturdays are for blissfully indulgent, uninterrupted hours of writing. Sundays inevitably seem slated for revisions, reservations, and ruminations (and doing the chores neglected on Saturday). But when this perfect storm of a weekend happens, I’ve typically left work well behind in my thoughts by Monday morning. I crank up the music and set off on the road thinking about unconnected scenes and bits of character conversations in the same way I recall real memories and things I’ve heard and said. And immersed in listening to this inner dialogue, more pieces of the story fall into place as the sun filters through the exhaust fumes and the exits roll by. The mind-numbing repetition of the drive is redeemed when the perfect phrase seals a moment and reveals new avenues to explore.

Sometimes I think that I should have a tape recorder on hand, because I do forget these epiphanies from time to time. A couple of emails are all that it takes to tarnish the brightest of moods. But I think, in the end, the truest words are never forgotten, and I suspect the replayed rambling of my voice would only dispel the magic of the Monday morning commute. By Monday evening, most of the glow has faded, and although there are other moments of inspiration as the rest of the week drags by, it’s never quite the same.

Quality writing time … at seventy miles per hour in five lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. I wonder what Jules Verne would think of that.