If there is a better exercise for stimulating creativity than an overdue vacation, enroll me in the next all day seminar. Afterward, I’ll buy the starter pack DVD and workbook, plus the advanced techniques DVD, and meditation cape. I’ll gladly follow the media anointed guru into every hotel conference room nationwide, tight on their heels like a Grateful Dead refugee.

Even though I’ll order the materials within thirty minutes–maybe sooner, thanks to a toll-free number–of the broadcast, I will decline the free wall poster for charting progress. One because there be little need to document; I’ll be on buses and trains trying to reach the next seminar, living the program and two, because I believe in the movement and my responsibility to get the precious gift of information where it belongs: In the hands of others who are awaiting to unlock their inner potential. Yay, for canned applause!

But until then, there’s the time-off method. Here the bonus prize is simple. Getting up early because I actually want to find out what will happen next. And it’s working.

Wrote more new material during the course of this vacation than the last few months combined. Also stuck to my charter: write like the only problem in the world is a blank page, avoid editing in place ( averting the over thinking before it starts ) and write every day.

So far so good. Now back to work. And writing.

One benefit of working for a school: a healthy vacation allowance. In theory, a nice chunk in the summer, plus one week during each of the winter and spring breaks. However, in practice I can’t remember ever taking the official allotment during the summer. This year I committed to taking two one week escapes and some long weekends.

Five hours after I left campus Friday for break one, a massive power outage knocked a few crucial services off-line, so I came back Saturday afternoon. My boss, eternally cool dude that he is, promised two days off for the inconvenience. He called from his own vacation to tell me this. I felt bad for him, actually. No reason for both of us to shift gears so abruptly.

Today was good writing wise. After reading a few books recently the Poet recommended, I settled on a different approach for the oft-waylaid thriller which has nothing to do with The Last Track. Last Monday I started playing with the technique. So far it feels pretty good. Kinda scary leaving behind 162 pages of prose in various stage of completion, though. Perhaps some of the older stuff can be recycled, although I’m not going to even worry about that right now.

A very important part of the strategy is to stay focused on writing new material and getting a draft in the can, rather than obsessively editing in place. Reviser disease kept me tied up on this novel off and on for over three years. Despite having some decent pages here and there, mostly the tactic led to a lot of two forward, three backwards motions.

The years were not completely wasted. I wrote other things during that time. A lot of personal things happened. But at the end of the day, I have a manuscript started in January 2006 nowhere near ready for even a cursory peek by people I trust. If that’s not a WTF realization, I don’t know what is.

At this point I only want more on the page. Slithering sideways in perpetuity generally works against completing a novel. Writing finishes novels. Clean up can wait.