Naturally, after last week, what happened is that I didn’t write at all during the week and so I found myself starting this weekend not only not having started this week’s kilo-word but down 160 words from not finishing last week’s. That was jolly.
You’ll remember that I was working on becoming comfortable with the crappiness of first drafts. And so I discovered something that helped me vastly this weekend. I started writing it on paper. And I found that once I was writing on paper, I couldn’t second-guess every freakin’ sentence. At most I could cross out three attempts before I started to feel very foolish and made myself just push forward. And therefore the bones of it got written way faster. And then, when I thought I might have had about the right number of words on paper (that was about two hours ago), then I sat down to type it up and edit it. And it’s worked out just about perfectly.
This week marks the first time I noticed one of my own inconsistencies. After posting, I went back to read it and I thought, “what? Kathline’s been at the palace for six months? and the gardens are lush? I thought it was fall and she just got here.” So plainly I need to work out just exactly which season it is right away. Thanks for your patience, maybe I’ll have that sorted for next week.
In the meantime, you can enjoy some hastily-written, less-edited-than-ideal and inconsistently written updatery: http://www.bloggingabook.com/2008/10/20/installments-8-and-9-2163-words/
I hope it was worth the wait.
Megan
The problem with the internet is that it’s filled with people that I’d really like to talk to and learn from, and most of them would let me for a fee.
In most of those cases I totally think it’s worth the fee, I’m just all poor and stuff from being at the poverty end of an 11 month maternity leave. And even once I’m getting paycheques again, I’ve got some catching up to do, and then Christmas (Christmas!).
My favourite people to read right now are Havi Brooks and Pamela Slim. (Pam, you would totally have come first in that list if you’d spend more time blogging and less time writing your own book, but then I suppose I wouldn’t be sitting here going, “how does she stay so focused on the book, dammit.”)
It’s true that it’s been a crazy week. It’s been my first week back at work, my daycare quit on my second day back at work, Ethan got pukey during the week. Now Rachel’s pukey and Ethan and Hannah have chicken pox. I’ve been interviewing new daycares and trying to deal with all the “my children are too intelligent and high strung to ever just get along and have a happy life” fears that the daycare problems are bringing up. But if I had just been able to take all my avoidance time this week and turn it into getting shit done time, I would not now be pondering the distasteful thought of having to give people back their quarters and admit that I couldn’t even turn out 1,000 words this week.
I still haven’t figured out, how much of my difficulty in getting this book written is about fears and avoidance issues that I could think about and deal with and how much is because I simply can’t let go of any of my other priorities.
For the last six months I’ve been saying, “you can’t have child-rearing and your career and writing your book and dancing and drumming all have equal priority. You are going to have to choose.” But so far, no luck. Well, dancing and drumming have been slowly falling by the wayside, but you wouldn’t believe how guilty and miserable I feel about it.
Here is where I was going to talk about some of the Havi Brooks lessons and the Pamela Slim lessons that I’ve put together about getting stuff done. It’s good stuff, but this here, this is avoidance work all over again. I’m afraid it will have to wait for another day.
Today is our Canadian Thanksgiving celebration. And while I haven’t given up on the idea that I’ll be able to miraculously find 550 words in me, I also have to clean the house and make apple tarts and get Rachel to her dance class before supper. Maybe I’ll bring a notebook and just sit and do some freewriting while Rachel dances.
