In Which I Explain the Inner Workings of my Mind with the Cunning Use of Puppets

[first published on Storytellers Unplugged, April 29, 2008; thank you to the Wayback Machine for helping me rescue it]


GUILDENSTERN: We should be working.
ROSENCRANTZ: On what?
GUILDENSTERN: Well, I don’t know! On, um, hey, what about that story?
ROSENCRANTZ: Which story?
GUILDENSTERN: You know. That story. The one with the stuff.
ROSENCRANTZ: [eye-roll] Oh, that‘s helpful.
GUILDENSTERN: Well, we should definitely be working.
ROSENCRANTZ: And I repeat, on what?
GUILDENSTERN: Look, this is unnatural, is all I’m saying.
ROSENCRANTZ: It’s called a vacation. VA-CA-TION. Which we have earned, you twit. My carpal tunnels are still carping.
GUILDENSTERN: Oh. Right.
GUILDENSTERN: …
GUILDENSTERN: Dammit, we should be working!
[Lather, rinse, repeat]
Unlike poor Rosencrantz (who obviously has an Underwood), I don’t actually have carpal tunnel problems (thanks largely to my workhorse of a Kinesis keyboard); otherwise, this is an accurate rendition of the inside of my head this month. It’s hard to take a vacation from writing for exactly the same reason that many people find it difficult to get any writing done if they aren’t taking a class or have some other form of external structure (e.g. NaNoWriMo). You have to train yourself to be self-starting. But once you’ve done that, you discover to your chagrin that there isn’t really much in the way of an off-switch. You can choose not to write. But you can’t choose to make Guildenstern shut up about it.And now I’m going to go work on that story. The one with the stuff.