When You Need to Increase Your Mental Bandwidth

I don’t think I’m wired for the freelancer life.

Photo by Giuliano Di Paolo on Unsplash

I spent most of today trying to spark an idea for a post. Unfortunately, every time I had an idea today, it came to me as a line of iambic pentameter.

Now, of course, lines of iambic pentameter have their place. They’re really useful when I’m struggling to write a sonnet, especially during the challenge that I’ve been running most of the year. Most of my sonnets begin with just a line, something that I can build off of.

But a blog post? It’s hard to build a blog post off of a line of poetic text. At least, one that most non-poets would want to read.

My mind isn’t very good at moving from one thing to another.

When my brain is in novel mode, I will work on my novel for ten hours a day. I will get into the zone, and I will start typing away, my hands moving like lightning to keep up with the thoughts and the stories flowing out of my head.

When my brain is in poetry mode, I come up with poems. And even that’s subdivided. This year, I’ve written mostly sonnets — as in, 6 of the 120 or so poems I’ve written this year have not been sonnets. Because that’s where my thoughts are rolling around.