I have taken this week off work to finish Unbound. The ending is kicking my arse and I seem to be oscillating between book-love and book-hate, like, three times in the past fifteen minutes. Also learning that pretending to be a full-time writer ain’t all fun and kittens and sparkle. Spending all day with invisible people and cranky cats makes for the crazy. Especially when it’s raining ALL DAY and even the dog doesn’t want to go out for a walk. Plus I think I’m drinking too much tea and eating too many delicious south american fried treats.
Husband will be home tomorrow, so at least we can go mad together. And hopefully I’ll smack some kind of plot out of the words I put down today. Then put down more. Then peer out at the real world and cackle inanely.
Unbound
Behold, the end of the world:
Navi has a skin irritation, poor thing. Luckily for us, she’s out of the cone now. Sadly, we are still all doomed to feel her wrath.
The vet thinks it’s an allergic reaction to something in her food. So she has to eat The Most Boring Food Ever for six weeks to see if it helps. She is not pleased about this. She is also not pleased that Chessie hates the cone and tried to attack it, with Navi still inside. And to add insult to injury Chessie really wants to eat The Most Boring Food Ever, instead of the yummy normal food Navi would kill for (and actually might kill, the way things are going).
Ah well, it was a nice life while it lasted…
…I’ll write a blog post. Aren’t I kind.
Unbound
Hit a small stumbling block today. We’re at ‘the beginning of the end’ of the novel, and today I was writing one of those big moments. You know the kind. Main character’s in a tight spot, OMG we’re all doomed, then something happens. Something that changes the game.
Except, I’m just not happy with it. And I tried to push on — this is a first draft and it can be patchy, after all. But nope, writerly brain did that cat thing — hackles raised, all the legs out — when you’re trying to shove them into the carrier to take them to the vet. It Would. Not. Go. On.
So, tomorrow evening my task will be to go back over that scene, and make it work. Doesn’t have to be polished and perfect, but certainly less with the wishy-washy, more with the making of sense. But right now, I’m going to do something completely different.
Today’s lesson is about compromise. What do you do when your back goes out, while doing something as apparently innocuous as showering, but you still want to finish a book by the end of the month? Why you set up a laptop on two playstation boxes so you can stand up and write, of course.
Observe:
Unbound
Unbound
I don’t consider myself a runner. A runner is someone who runs seriously, who trains, and who competes in marathons. Me, I jog. Cuz ‘jog’ is casual. I don’t do it in the rain, and I don’t stress if I miss a day, and I certainly don’t race against anyone. But still, reading about Haruki Murakami talking about running and writing resonated with me. It’s all in the rhythm.
When I’ve got the rhythm, I can jog for ages, and I enjoy every minute of it. I listen to music. Gully runs along beside me, and all the stress of the day (and the pain in my back) goes away, until I’m nothing but smooth, constant movement. And when I’ve got the rhythm, I can type for hours. I listen to music, and the cats lie next to me (or sometimes on the keyboard). The rest of the world goes away, I don’t even notice the pain in my back, and I’m nothing but the world on my screen and the people in my head.
Right now is not one of those times.
I wish it was. I want that rhythm back. But the big wide world (actually, mostly the big pushy day-job) is tripping me up. So what can I do? Keep running, right? Keep moving forward, keep breathing, until that rhythm returns.
