A Control Freak's Technique

A few years ago I noticed an apparent contradiction in my personality.  Although I thrive on having time to create, I also really enjoy stupid, simple, menial tasks.  

When I was small I remember my mom giving me jobs like tearing the perforated pages out of Sunday School books.  I remember us setting up an assembly line for making baby shower favors where my job would be nothing but to put a hundred dots of glue on some object someone was going to throw away a week later.  Every fall we would have a huge Harvest party at our house, and I adored dividing up the various pieces of candy and putting them into bags.  And I still do. 

Something in me didn't quite understand why that was until I started to get older, and began piecing together other aspects of my personality.  Now, the answer is quite simple: I'm a control freak. And, somehow, there's just something therapeutic about doing something of no consequence just because it's in my control. 

Writing, unfortunately, is almost never like that.  Words and ideas tend to swarm around in my head like bees that have the ability to give you an uncomfortable tingling sensation, a nasty sting, or that awful freaked-out feeling you get when they buzz up right between your eyes. Often, when I'm working on something, even if it's small, I tend to get overwhelmed with the block of words on a page.  Sometimes, I just don't know what to do with them.  

Recently, I discovered a technique that helps me out when I'm trying to decide whether something belongs where I've put it.  It helps me decide how to organize things, and distinguish if they'd flow better if something was moved or deleted.   What I like to do, when I'm really stumped, is to print out what I'm working on, and start to cut the papers into units.  How small the units are depends on what my focus is.  Sometimes the chunk consists of several paragraphs,   but occasionally just a few words.  Then, I like to sit on the floor with the pieces and rearrange them like flowers in a bouquet, trying this one here, and that one there.  A lot of times I'll delete something altogether, or maybe I'll leave it exactly like it was because I decide that I'm satisfied with it.  But if I can get my hands on it, sometimes it just feels simpler -more like I own it, even though, let's be honest, usually my work owns me.  

Below is a picture of what my floor looked like yesterday.  I was working with a few random samplings of things I'd written, trying to decide what was worth keeping, and what I ought to just scrap.  Luckily, I noticed that two of the poems I'd written had the same theme.  I started cutting, and moving, and piecing together an entirely different piece of work. Of course I'm not entirely satisfied with the end result, but having the ability to have my words in front of me in a tangible way allowed me to play with my work when I got stumped, instead of just staring at a computer screen. 

Yes, that is a bowl of saltwater taffy.