Saturday, October 09, 2010

today was just a day bleeding into another

I was horribly unproductive today -- all remaining tasks at work are things I don't want to do, and I'm back to stressing about the book because I'm sick to death of it and wish that I had finished it a year ago so that I could be working on something else. Even though I've been writing pretty steadily since the end of July, the fact that I killed off the father and changed the plot completely changed the book, and I probably should have just started from scratch, since that's essentially what I did.

Here's a fun fact: even though I've written 33,389 words in the past two months (which is pretty respectable -- I'd rather be writing 2000 words/day, but 500/day is totally fine), I've actually got 10,000 words *less* than I had at the start of August. At the beginning of August, I was at 55,222 words; if I had been able to add those 33,389 words to that number, I would have a fully-finished book. Instead, I'm now at 45,866 words -- which means I basically deleted 20% of what I had, rewrote 60% of it, and kept the other 20% (at least for now). It's no wonder this book is driving me insane -- even though I feel like I'm making steady progress, I simultaneously feel like the goal line is moving farther and farther away.

So, apologies if I'm just a wee bit frustrated. I'm not doubting my decision to focus on writing full-time -- I always manage to work through these doldrums, and the sun will come out tomorrow (yes, I just referenced a musical, sue me), and Madeleine and Ferguson will live to love another day, even though tonight I want to kill them. But, writing has its downsides just like any other job -- and while I would rather bang my head against my desk trying to come up with a plot than fill out another expense report, at least expense reports are easy.

Now, unfortunately, it's time for bed -- and if Madeleine and Ferguson don't come to me in my dreams and tell me what happens when he takes her home for the first time (they don't have sex, so the dream should just be informative, not pornographic), I will be quite displeased. Goodnight!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

One Night to Insanity

A young writer is forced to watch Craig Ferguson 22 hours a day. Relief comes during the two hours a day with Lady Gaga.

You go gettum!!

Your cousin kicked 8 of 8 PATs in the homecoming game Friday night.

Slater