Slipping
Tue 2005-03-15 21:10:41 (in context)
- 5,000 words (if poetry, lines) long
- 52,853 words (if poetry, lines) long
- 18.50 hrs. revised
(If I keep this up, I'll have blogs with titles taken from the entire songlist off My Favorite Headache.)
Didn't get anything done on the novel yesterday, and only an hour today. But! I managed to finish and submit that short story I've been working on. It will reach the slush pile for which it is destined with a postmark of today or tomorrow, putting it well under the March 21st deadline.
Note to self: March deadlines are hell on NaNoEdMo goals.
So, today being the 15th, I ought to be halfway through my 50 hours. To wit, 25. /me glances up at current hour count--hey, that reminds me, there's supposed to be an IRC channel for NaNoEdMo participants... Anyway, I need to start clocking some 3-hour days until I'm back on track.
I'm trying to figure out why I didn't get more done today. Chalk it up to the seduction of accomplishment, I guess. I handed my precisely postaged envelope to the mail carrier (who was kind enough to get my building's mailbox cluster, which was jammed, unstuck), and went back inside feeling mighty fine. "I've done it!" I said. "I sent my story out to meet the world! I have done what a writer should! ...I get to slack off now!"
Well, yes, true, but for the rest of the damn day? That was noon, and I didn't touch my novel until 8:15 PM.
Some people manage to do this for a good 6-8 hours a day. Hell, I used to go to work and sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day. Why can't I seem to do that with writing? Is it just the lack of a supervisor to reinforce my ALT-TAB instincts? I know it's not, as certain cynics would answer, that I'm not cut out to be a writer. When having completed an ambitious story that, upon rereading it, makes me say, "Damn, that's good," I get a euphoria like little else in the world. That's the universe, via my bones, telling me, "Yeah, that's what you're here for. You're right. That's what I want you to do with yourself." I only wish I didn't seem to have this hate/fear/reluctance reaction to the process.
Tomorrow I'll probably do my usual Wednesday thing: head down to Joe's Espresso (nee The Painted Bean) when the cafe opens at 6, clock a good 2 hours, and then goof off until it's time to go to my part-time job, where I will bang my head against the brick wall that is Microsoft Access until by sheer brute force I create the find-listeners-by-radio-serial-number search function that we need so badly. Then I'll come home and hopefully clock another 2 hours, rather than slack off with guilt breathing down my neck all evening. See, I don't really believe that guilt-ridden slacking off is somehow more enjoyable than guilt-free slacking off. Self-loathing is overrated.
I hereby give myself permission, once I have clocked a total of 4 hours on this novel tomorrow, to slack off with a squeaky clean conscience.
Ta-da! Magic!