Taxes are done–except for my mother-in-law’s. She still hasn’t given me all her documents, so I just filed an extension for her. I’ll look into it in a month or so.

Sara, Richard and Ephraim have gone back to Oklahoma City. They were here Wednesday through yesterday. Thus after the taxes were done I had Ephraim to play with and read to, Richard to discuss theology and church polity/ministry with, and Sara to discuss business. I wasn’t about to write much during that time. I enjoy them being here, but there’s something to be said for a quiet house and the ability to be anti-social without guilt.

Yesterday was also our busy grocery and errands day. We arrived home to the quiet house and I had to finish reading a missions book to take back to church today, and read in the Shack and prepare a lesson in case I had to teach. I also found time to read one article from Poets and Writers magazine before dead-tiredness drove me to bed last night.

Today was a wonderful day at church, a missions service and pledges for missions giving for the coming year. Life group was great (I didn’t have to teach). The church dinner was great. The missionary’s talk was informative and inspiring. On the way home Lynda and I stopped at a trail and walked a mile and a half. Then I read another article in Poets and Writers, dozing as I did. Then I came to the dungeon, and for the last two hours have caught up on some writing forums and written two sets of passage notes for my harmony of the gospels.

I have much reading to do this evening, including an article on labyrinth weirs that I hope to finish and be able to do some calculations on tomorrow. I have some work time to make up due to using work time last week for our church parking lot project. Work looks to be very busy for a couple of weeks, between my regular CEI business and the pro-bono stuff for the church. So I won’t say the logjam that prevents me from writing is fully broken–but I can see clear water ahead.

I planned on writing today. From the moment I got up and prepared for church–no, actually from last night when I got home from a adult Life teachers’ meeting and our weekly pilgrimage to Wal-Mart–I had writing on my mind. When we got home from church I grabbed Poets and Writers magazine, took it to the sun porch, and read until I fell asleep. This was all according to plan. I woke up from my nap, had a light lunch, and came down to the Dungeon to begin my writing.

What to write? Perhaps an article for Suite101, the second in my series on rain gardens? Maybe a couple of passage notes for the harmony of the gospels. Maybe even 500 or 1000 words on my novel. Or perhaps begin the writing on my next Sunday School series, on the sacraments. The latter, I thought. I had my study book, I had my lesson series outline, and looked at the computer.

There, showing on the bottom bar (the task bar?), was the Excel logo with four files active. What were all those files, I wondered. A simple click showed they were tax spreadsheet. Oh, shoot, I was supposed to finish the Federal taxes today, so I could hopefully do the State tomorrow and then my mother-in-law’s Tuesday/Wednesday.

So, I’m afraid writing is out the window for a few more days. The good news is my Federal taxes are done, except for figuring out the IRA contribution so I don’t have to write a check to the evil IRS, and proof-reading, math checking, printing, etc. So I’ll sign off and look to that. Writing, see you another time.

Sorry for my absence of late. Been working on my income taxes, beginning with my writing income (or lack thereof) and expenses, followed by the stock trading business income and expense. We actually made money this year.

But I find this all consuming. Monday-Tuesday it took up the whole evening. I skipped church tonight (well, truck trouble had something to do with that) to do the taxes. I had one more thing to do to finish figuring the stock trading income, something that should have taken me all evening. However, I started it and five minutes into it realized the answer I was working towards was right there on the Fidelity brokerage statement. To be sure I contacted Fidelity, and the rep confirmed it. What I thought would take four hours took fifteen minutes.

With my evening thus relieved, I should have knuckled down and gotten to the expense side of the business taxes. However, my wind wafted into reading land. I went upstairs, cooked a simple vegetable supper, read some pages in an academic article about the canon of the scriptures, then went to work on editing my article for Biblio Buffet. A way to possible do what the editors wanted had come to mind today, and the found time seemed a good time to get that done. Fired it off a few minutes ago. We’ll see how it works.

So, tomorrow I get the pick-up back, and will get back on the taxes. I think one, possibly two, evenings to get the expenses done, then one more evening to actually fill out and print the business forms. Then the personal Federal forms will consume the weekend. I’ll take a week or a little more off and then hit the Arkansas taxes. No, wait, I need to get my mother-in-law’s done too, and this year she will likely owe taxes so I can’t turn them in late. Rats. Then there will be calls from someone who always needs my guidance for his taxes.

So, I may not be posting here at the frequency I like.

Unluckily or luckily this notion of writing on the Working Classes has in the interim died away in me; and I have altogether lost it for the present. I have got upon Thuycidides, Johannes Müller, the Crusades, and a whole course of objects connected with my Lectures; sufficient to occupy me abundantly till that fatal time come. We will commit my Discourse on the Working Classes once more to the chapter of chances.

In early 1838 Thomas Carlyle wrote these words as the introductory paragraph of a letter to John Stuart Mills. It seems that Carlyle had committed to writing an article about the working classes for Mill’s London and Westminster Review magazine. Carlyle, however, with this letter put off Mill, claiming he didn’t have the notion to write on it at that time, being fully engaged in preparing to give a lecture series that would start April 30, 1838.

I can sympathize with Carlyle. As I wrote yesterday on this blog,”inspiration” suddenly hit me yesterday, and I went back to working on the Harmony of the Gospels, going after the passage notes with great interest. When I worked on some of the passage notes previously (meaning over a year ago) I had some difficulty deciding on a format for them. Should I type the parallel passages in a table or columns? Or should I just refer to the passages and let a reader (including me sometime in the future) pull out a Bible and flip between gospels? I elected to go with typing the parallel passages in a Word table? More work, more paper, more trees killed (or pixels consumed), but more usable passage notes.

As I said yesterday, working on this wasn’t on the radar screen for this month, probably not for the year, but my reading drew me to it. This seems to be the way of my writing life. Reading or teaching or some other of life’s activities gives me a burst of interest, and I (research if necessary and) write. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new project or old project, an outlined project or seat-of-the-pants piece. It doesn’t matter if I have been hot and heavy in the middle of something else. I go with the flow. Wherever the creative waters gush, there I go.

So that puts me at odds with Carlyle. It seems that, while he recognized that he should follow his creative juices, he also knew he had to complete a project to make some money. His lecture series would be quite profitable, and Carlyle at that point in his career still did not have financial success. So somehow he found the inspiration he needed to prepare his lectures. The working classes did not inspire him at that moment, and would not really futher his goals, though they would a year or two later.

When I feel the creative juices flowing in a certain direction, I go there, regardless of what I’m working on at the moment. That’s why I have a dozen writing projects opened, and none finished. In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People was where I was supposed to be spending my time yesterday. That and two articles for Suite 101. Despite the busyness of a Sunday, I had enough time carved out to write a thousand words in FTSP or complete at least one if not two articles for Suite. Yet I went with the flow instead of practicing creative discipline.

On Rachelle Gardner’s blog on Friday I made a comment about that (comments 207 and 208 to Rachelle’s post), claiming I had genre identity disorder (G.I.D.). That may have been a misnomer. Perhaps I should call it Writer Discipline Deficiency. Or maybe Uncontrolled Creative Flow.

Somehow I need to learn to do what Carlyle did: go with the creative flow, yet complete projects started before going on to the next. Get the next idea documented in a notebook or journal, locked down, and carry on where I was before the inspiration hit.

Oh well, tonight, as the time allows, I will be mostly working on passage notes again, trying to get the notes written for at least one passage. If time allows and inspiration calls, I’ll see about a Suite article too. However, what I really should do tonight is get my household budget and financial records up to date (1.5 months behind) and get something done on my income taxes. Unfortunately, inspiration for those two items is lacking.