Easy to Write

Why is it easier to write when I know I have only a few minutes? Is it a form of procrastination? The Freudian flip-side, perhaps?  If I have a whole day to devote to my characters--or they to me, as the case may be--then I find a hundred little things that must be done immediately, in succession, or better yet in tandem, so that no one thing is ever completed . . . but if I have only a few minutes before I have to be out the door, the words flow like water.

So I've developed a faucet solution to a Freudian problem. It's actually very simple: I sit myself down at the computer (knowing I can only stay a moment or three), then I turn on the tap and let the letters flow. After a bit, the faucet goes off and I jump up and sweep the floor, take a walk, shampoo my hair, or a even just load the washing machine. That's when the ideas break over me in waves . . . and then I rush back to the computer and try to capture them in print. Somedays, it's as exhausting as treading water in a storm. But the words do flow. Maybe they aren't the perfect, good china words I long for, but as someone much wiser than I once said,