Friday, January 28, 2011

when a heart breaks, well it don't break even

I had an excellent day even though I didn't get a lick of writing done. Perhaps I should rephrase -- I had an excellent end to the day that wiped away all memories of the drudgery of earlier in the day. The day started with my dream self viciously fighting to stay asleep, rather than sullenly acquiescing to my field-marshal self's demand to get up and go to the gym. I didn't sleep well at all last night, which was part of the problem, and so I went into the gym on less than six hours of sleep (not enough) and half a cup of cottage cheese that I ate in the car (not enough, and also possibly slightly dangerous). When I got there, I realized that the reward for getting my muscles properly stretched yesterday was that I could do more sets/reps today -- how is that fair? So, Alyssa pushed me hard today, which left me feeling vaguely ill (probably because I don't do well eating right after I wake up) but also v. good about overcoming my dream self's desires to stay in bed.

Of course, I came home and promptly took a nap (although it feels weird to call it a nap when it was at 9:45am). Then, I spent half an hour on the phone with a recruiter who is interviewing someone who used to report to me, messed around on Twitter for a bit, and spent several hours cleaning my house. It wasn't horrendously dirty, but it needed a good dusting/swiffering/vacuuming/polishing, which I proceeded to do. Now, every room but my bedroom looks great, and that makes me much happier going into the weekend. I did take a break in the afternoon to run some errands and get groceries, and then I came home, ate some supper, and finished reading the stories that I needed to read for my writing group tonight. I also had one moment of amused delight that made my day -- my brother sent me a letter with the word 'glitter' repeated all over it, in a clear allusion to the profusion of glitter he would have been covered in if the Christmas card I had sent him had not been lost in the mail. How sad that he didn't get it, but the letter he sent me in return was worth the loss.

So the reason I was in such a mad rush to clean today was that I was hosting the writing group. It's the one that formed after the great historical fiction class that I took last winter, and almost everyone attended tonight -- including a new member who took a class with that instructor last fall and got put in touch with us because she was looking for a writing group. It was a great group size (seven people tonight) and a v. fun discussion, which left me excited and energized for the work ahead. Even though no one else writes romance, it's been fun to see what they've been working on, since several people in the group are working on book-length fiction, which means each time they present, we get to see a different snippet of a broader story. I was also really impressed by the new woman's short story -- gorgeous writing and a v. nice description of character. She also seemed to be impressed with us for having a broad age range, which I thought was rather funny, although when she said that her previous writing group died off, I think she perhaps meant it more literally than I originally took it.

Anyway, I bit the bullet and sent them the first two chapters of zee romance novel so that they could critique it. It turned out to be very helpful to get the perspectives of people who've never read romance before, since I was curious to see if they were hooked early on, if they understood the characters well enough, etc. They pointed out some v. good places for me to focus on improvements, but on the whole seemed to enjoy it, which was obviously an ego-boost. And, my concerns about how a group that focuses mostly on literary fiction would react to lines such as "Ferguson did not say anything — could not say anything. He was too distracted by the sudden, furious rush of blood to his cock." were misplaced. They didn't even bring that line up (thank goodness), and on the whole seemed to think it was delightful. So, yay.

The group was super fun, with many conversational detours into publishing and literature in general, and so I'm glad that we got together. They ended up trickling out the door around 9:30, with plans to meet again in three weeks. I'm glad that I'm not taking a class this quarter, if only because it makes it easier to spend time with this group (which I've shamefully neglected up to this point).

But now, I must go to bed; I want to go to the gym tomorrow, and I must write before I die (or, more likely, Madeleine and Ferguson die) from the lack of words spilling onto the page. Goodnight!

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