And, getting nowhere in the departments that matter, in a holding pattern of sorts, I finally take it upon myself to clear the table.
I really need a desk.
The table, piled high with notes, pertinent and largely irrelevant, is a source of Anxiety. Like the dishes piled beside the sink and the unmade bed. SO - 2 minutes later and the table is cleared. That's how long it takes. The table is cleared and I can begin to "concentrate" on the project(s) I need to get done.
1 at a time.
This clutter, it's an externalization of my mental processes, an extension, I need only to review my notes to see, abundant notes, 100, 000 words where I only needed 1000, but the RIGHT words, the RIGHT phrasing, there is an alchemy to their combining, a recipe, a rhythm that I hit upon only occasionally, that I need to exercise, find the flow.
There are - so far as I know - 2 forms of creation. One, the generative - building, things upon things, growth - add letter to letter, build a word, word to word to build a sentence, sentence to paragraph to chapter to novel. So it goes. The other form, destructive, hammering upon stone to free the form you imagine is imprisoned within.
I am somewhere between them both, add, edit, revise, add some more, edit, revise, from a page of notes I - if I am lucky, inspired, quick, find a paragraph or verse. And begin it again, write another page, then reduce, edit, compress, scratch out, erase, write again, and - perhaps - another paragraph at the end.
So it goes.