I know, dear reader, that I owe you far more than you are currently getting on this blog. I'm not exactly sure why I've had a relative aversion to blogging recently - part of it, no doubt, is that I have too much work, and there were a couple of nights last week where I simply forgot to blog before going to bed. Other nights, though, it was a conscious choice - particularly when I knew about my leave of absence but couldn't talk about it, I felt that I was holding too much of my current state back, and so it almost felt like a betrayal to write about my life without mentioning the most exciting part of it.
Now that it's official, though, it still feels a little unreal - I haven't taken six months off from anything since the day that I started preschool (and that was something I was so eager to start that I got up and ready to go a day early, as I recall, and was horribly disappointed to find that I would have to wait until Tuesday - I was a Tuesday Tiger, and not a Monday Monkey, at the every-other-day church-run preschool that I went to). So, I find myself both excited and unsure about my upcoming leave. Mostly excited, of course, but also unsure what I will discover about myself. I'm hoping that I discover that I do have the discipline necessary to finish my novel, and that I'm capable of relaxing from my professional stresses while also focusing intensely on the creative aspects of my life. However, it's also possible (even though the possibility feels remote) that I will find myself horribly bored and missing the challenges and triumphs of corporate America - I am, after all, a good little capitalist at heart, and so the more Puritanical side of me sees giving up a steady job to write romance novels as a rather silly thing to do. But, I also feel that I can make money writing them someday, which is keeping the capitalist in me quiet for now.
Anyway, this weekend was so-so - I spent five hours in the office yesterday afternoon, which was super annoying, but I also had brunch at Mike's Cafe and spent some time contemplating my novel. This afternoon, I went to a tea place in Palo Alto and had a couple of pots of tea and some delicious (albeit overpriced) tea sandwiches and crumpets while working on my romance novel. I wrote ~2400 words, which is close to ten pages, in less than three hours. At that rate, it would take me twenty three-hour days to finish my novel. Given that 700-1000 words/hour seems to be my standard pace, it seems quite conceivable that I could write a romance novel in a month, start to finish, even with additional time spent plotting.
However, I'm going to have to do some significant editing; I reread a lot of my earlier stuff tonight, and since I've been writing this in fits and starts over the course of three years, details keep changing - particularly pesky little things like the number of siblings each of them has, or the occasional disappearance and reappearance of Amelia's friend. It's going to take some reworking to make sure the narrative voice is consistent throughout the book, and also some careful editing to fix the little inconsistencies. But overall, I'm fairly pleased - it's certainly in the top half of all of the romance novels I've read, even in its unfinished form. Whether that says something about the quality of my writing, or instead is an indicator of the overall state of the romance genre, remains to be seen.
It would be nice if my leave was starting right now - my boss still hasn't set a date, and instead has been lavishing praise on me for a variety of projects, which is making me wonder if he's going to try to convince me to stay. I'm going to remain firm, though...I just have to know if this dream is something I can turn into a life, and this is the best time to figure that out. If nothing else, I won't starve to death - and I told my mother that, for Christmas, I was considering giving her and my father an IOU for a couple of months of my company in early 2008. Isn't that a lovely present? They're so lucky to have a thoughtful daughter like me :)
3 comments:
We're very lucky indeed!
That's a very generous gift indeed. Seems like the last time we enjoyed your company for a couple of months it cost me several thousand dollars.
"Whether that says something about the quality of my writing, or instead is an indicator of the overall state of the romance genre, remains to be seen." Third option, you are full of yourself... kidding!
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