Sunday, February 08, 2009

when your chips are down, when your highs are low, joyride

Today was a nightmare if you think that Sundays are meant to be relaxing -- I did three loads of laundry, changed my sheets, vacuumed, and then wrote 5500 words (~22 pages) of Ferguson and Madeleine's story. I took a break to talk to my parents, but that was basically all I did. I persevered even though I wasn't particularly in the mood; my stomach hurt this afternoon, which resulted in me canceling on a writing date with Tom because I didn't want to drag myself out of my apartment into the wet San Francisco afternoon.

Really, all I wanted to do today was take a break. Adding a continuing studies class to my already packed weeks, regardless of how much I feel that I'm learning from it, is taking its toll on my ability to feel refreshed and rejuvenated merely by getting eight hours of sleep, or taking five minutes away from my stream of meetings to let my tea steep properly, or watching the occasional Craig Ferguson episode while answering some emails. Luckily the class is totally worth it, and it's already half over -- but the next three weeks could be a bit painful as a result.

Despite my desire for a break, I didn't really take one. I'm committed to getting through a first draft of Ferguson and Madeleine's story as quickly as possible, and that means I need to write whenever I have opportunity, and this weekend's opportunity was all consolidated into today. Overall, I think it went pretty well, even though I had to keep resisting the urge to go back and start rewriting the first section. Now that I have one hundred pages (100 pages in 3 weeks!), I have enough of an idea of how I want the beginning to go that there are things I would change about what I've already written. I just have to remember that I still have 300 pages to go, and given how frequently my ideas change during this early phase, there's a strong chance that something so drastic would change that I would have to rewrite the beginning again even if I went back and fixed it now.

So I'm going to keep slogging ahead. I would love to have a first draft by the end of March. That's super aggressive, though -- I need to average 9472 words a week, and so far I've averaged 7561. That means I could be finished by the end of April, though, and that's totally respectable. Finishing a first draft by the end of April would let me put it away for a few weeks, then pick it up again at the end of May and spend June and July turning it into a second draft worth of being shared with my beta readers.

Just thinking of all of that exhausts me, though, particularly since I have to a) stay employed so that I can eat, which means I need to do great things at my day job, b) stay in touch with my friends and family so that I don't turn into a crazy cat lady someday (I already own the right sweater -- I'm wearing it right now, it's an oversized grey thing that comes to my knees), and c) keep trying to sell AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE. Yay.

Sorry this blog post is not the post upbeat in the world, but luckily for you, it doesn't end in a depressing story about a suicidal anorexic. That's something we can all celebrate. Goodnight!

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