Rain and rowlocks.

At last.

At long, chuffing last.

Miserable weather.

>CRACKS OUT LACED FINGERS AND PULLS IN CHAIR<

I can finally get some decent work done.

—

Of course, it’s not helpful to a normal household rhythm, but gloomy teatimes can be a great time for the brain to find creative traction. The more the rain slips down the window, the better it seems; the fuller the gutter, the firmer the grip.

Now that I have low lights on and ridiculous jazz courtesy of FIP, I can feel productivity seeping through my veins again, bringing Momo’s mojo to life.

I’ve found some gorgeous afternoons draining productivity this summer. The ability to make decisions sometimes, worryingly, just departs and I’ve spent hours scratching at the layout pad and the screen and the kettle, muttering motivational mantras to no decisional avail. I loath it. I’ve left school. I hate the suspicion that I need a scary maths teacher to help me get through a piece of work.

Momo does, of course, operate like a business even with me at the helm. Writers may get to lie in until noon and then gaze forlornly at daytime telly until cake time, but my little studio always has something sensible in actual production, with things like deadlines and phone calls and emails and budgets and strategies and clever-dick ideas to administer.

Beats me how I let this happen.

But, even so, when you are the business and the Brilliant Brain fairy leaves your shoulder, it doesn’t feel encouraging.

So a bit of cosy rain tonight feels like a refreshing shower to the outlook.

—

It’s something to do with my ever-deepening love affair with Autumn, of course – the season of fresh starts. I’ve been actively waiting for it this year, despite loving impromptu sunshine and family and lazy riverbanks and discovering the lunacy that is the invention of rowing, on days like Monday’s bank holiday.

All very good and much appreciated – but that’s the point, after all. Summer should really be the time to let go of the reins a little; create the rhythm of a restart at the back-to-school time of year.

I think, though, this year’s been a bit of an exaggeration for me on that score because of Momo’s preponderance of cranium-aching projects over the balmy months. If everything on your creative schedule at any one time is strategic stuff – fathoming marketing campaigns, or website structures – you’re in danger of running out of buffer space in the brain, let me say.

I rather prefer having some of the projects on the schedule near their end and needing some pretty artwork finishing or fancy words filling in.

Still, if I can keep with it enough – and if this rotten and therefore inspirational weather digs in properly – the cranium aching of this summer may well lead to a very interesting final quarter of 2009 for Momo. Both Tempo and Typo.

—

I should feel encouraged, I guess. Most of the time I keep Momo on a steady course down stream nicely. Al hamdu li lah. But as I approach the beginning of this funny business’ eighth year – eighth, for Pete’s sake – I am certainly ready to see a new season unfold around me.

If this rain keeps up, of course, it may really float Momo’s little rowboat.

But, as I have now learned with blistered palms thanks to the hire place on the river at Wareham, pulling for all you’re worth just to go backwards seems like an awful lot of rowlocks.