• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Rabia Gale

alchemical fantasy

  • Home
  • Stories
    • The Reflected City
    • The Sunless World
    • Taurin’s Chosen
    • Heartwood
    • Stand-Alones
  • Newsletter
  • Blog
  • About Me
  • Contact

headspace

A week ago, I wrote about all the time I’ve spent not writing. Today I want to talk about another limited resource: the mental space in which my stories dwell, quietly gestating, until they’re ready to be written. I call this (quite cleverly) headspace.

All my stories need simmering, but there are only so many mental burners available. All too often, bossy overbearing thoughts shove the stories out of the way. If I’m lucky, the stories end up in the deep freezer, lying dormant next to structures of organic molecules, second order differential equations, the names of my elementary school teachers and mystery meat. Perhaps I’ll find those stories again some day. If I’m unlucky, the stories fall to the floor and fly apart in gushes of half-done soup and pot fragments, never to be reclaimed.

Sometimes, I wish my stories would shove back (and some do). Most, however, are quite shy and passive. The bullying thoughts are many, and come in many shapes and sizes, but fit in one of three not-story categories.

Category one is the minutiae of daily life. Planning meals. Making shopping lists. Juggling schedules. Returning calls. Writing emails. Checking Google Reader. All of these take up valuable headspace. Take planning meals, for example. It’s not enough for me to declare, “Tonight we are having pizza with scallions and peanut butter sauce.” Nope. I have to go through a list of questions, such as: Do we have scallions and peanut butter in the house? Do we have room in the budget to buy scallions? Will D. be able to find scallions at the grocery store? What the heck are scallions, anyhow? Can I find a picture online of scallions to show D.? And, will my family stage a revolt if I served them pizza with scallions and peanut butter sauce?

Yep, that one meal snitched about half the headspace required by the sequel to Out of Shape.

Category two: worries, concerns, anxiety. These range from the small (“If I let my kids out of the house in their current choice of clothing, will I be arrested by the fashion police?”) to the large (“Oh my. Our IRAs took quite a hit last year. Shall I sell an ovary now, or take a job as a Wal-Mart greeter when our youngest starts college?”).

There goes the second half.

Category three: My other interests. Theology. Homeschooling. Blogging. Giant squids. The endless quest for the perfect chocolate dessert. These can be the hardest to curtail because they too are worth pursuing. It’s just that my headspace, like my time, is a finite resource. Here is where I need to make hard choices.

I will probably never learn to knit. My crocheting will continue to be… interesting (as D. says, “Handmade is supposed to look handmade”). Riding horses may just happen in my imagination. And the writing will be slow during the years I’ll be teaching the kids at home.

This I know. But I am content.

Now. If I schedule chicken nuggets and fries for dinner every night of the week, do you think I can reclaim headspace for that sequel to Out of Shape??

Share via email Share

Filed Under: challenges, creativity, writing process

Get Each Post in Your Inbox

Sign up here to receive each blog post in your inbox.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. David says

    January 21, 2009 at 4:06 pm

    Wow, I’m suddenly very glad that I’m the one who puts the toppings on the pizzas.

    Reply
  2. Rabia says

    January 21, 2009 at 8:14 pm

    Heh. πŸ™‚

    Reply
  3. Mariyam says

    January 21, 2009 at 9:32 pm

    Can’t help you reduce the headspace taken up by most things, but can help you with the perfect chocolate dessert: Betty Crocker’s Dark Chocolate Walnut Brownies. I am usually a food snob and don’t do things “out of a box”, but these, my friend, actually satisfied the chocolate and sugar monster that possesses me. Just add extra walnuts and extra eggs.

    Reply
  4. dkoren says

    January 22, 2009 at 10:53 am

    Ooooh, this post is so true! And your categories? Yep… those are the culprits. Although for me, it’s often the stories that push the daily stuff away, which is how I end up not eating for two days…. which is probably a result of being single and not having anyone else to care for and therefore the daily stuff becomes unimportant. Had I family to care for, this would not be the case.

    Reply
  5. Rabia says

    January 22, 2009 at 11:55 am

    Yep, if I did not have little ones, my stories would be a lot bossier. D. can get his own dinner and do his own laundry. πŸ˜€

    Mariyam, I have to try those brownies some time! (But perhaps I should live in ignorance of such easy-to-find-and-easy-to-make decadence!)

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

  • Email
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Join the Mailing List

I send out monthly newsletters, and share some special content with subscribers only. Join me!
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Search

Latest Release

Sun and Strands

A bunch of magical misfits. Their place to belong. Out of work and trapped in a dead-end coastal town. This is not what Amber had in mind when she left her island home to explore a continent drenched in magic and once inhabited by dragons. She’s this close to working at Stunning Spells, a magical sweatshop that churns [read more] about Sun and Strands

Recent Posts

Afterthoughts: Witchblaze

January 31, 2021 8 Comments

A YA anime-inspired web serial

April 30, 2019 Leave a Comment

The Darkest Days Fantasy Bundle

July 10, 2018 Leave a Comment

Now Out: Ghostlight

May 31, 2018 Leave a Comment

Categories

© 2023 Rabia Gale | All Rights Reserved | Design by Robin Cornett | Header Artwork by David Revoy: Used with permission | Privacy Policy