Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Me and My Menses

Not a happy writing day today. Not a happy day period, actually. Not quite sure why. I got enough sleep. I got up on time. I did my usual morning thing of writing and exercising. I even ate a nutritious breakfast. All of those things should have me coasting on perky endorphins. Instead I am irritable and tense. It is exercise in self control not to snap at everyone who crosses my path. To reduce the risk of homicide, I sequestered myself at a remote café with my laptop and a sequence of very large mocha lattés. I felt like crying for no particular reason. I made it through the day by just focusing on my To Do list one item at a time and ignoring all incoming calls.

The chicks out there will recognize the above description as classic PMS. The fact that I can accomplish this without a uterus is a medical miracle. Somebody notify Lancet.

My foul mood did lead to a realization about the novel, though, which is that I am not really writing anymore... or at least I am not creating anything. There is an issue of diminishing returns when plotting and researching, and I can touch the asymptote from where I am standing. Furthermore, not only is the planning unfinished, but it is also un-fun. I don't mind working hard. Hell, I love working hard. Whatever it is that I'm doing, I'm not loving it, and if I'm not loving it, then it's not working.

So, you know what? Fuck it. Fuck Snowflake Methods and character charts and timelines. Fuck scene outlines and story arcs. Fuck it all. I’m just going to start rewriting the damn novel. I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote the first draft. How much worse can writing the second draft be?

Tomorrow begins today.

**********
Today's writing totals:
Plot: 273 words
Journal: 325 words
Blog: 309 words
DAILY TOTAL: 907 words

JANUARY RUNNING TOTAL: 9,838/15,500 words

4 comments:

Brad Green said...

Sometimes it's best to write when the subconscious is in control. Snowflaking and charting and all that tend to suppress that often wild narrative flow that bubbles up when one is simply typing.

I switch back and forth among methodologies, with plenty of whining in between for sure. One stops working, move to the other. Be a whore with methodologies. Whatever gets out the words.

Anonymous said...

I love that you used the word asymptote in a post not about math (even though I couldn't really remember what it meant and had to look it up).

I got to play with the thesaurus at work today. Almost as much fun as the retractable circ saw I had installed last week.

--cs10

Bittersweet Sage said...

To BG:

Thanks for the encouragement. The bad mood (which is ongoing and may be permanent, so do NOT cross me, muthafukkas) did serve to kick me out of my non-productive and seemigly endless planning stage. I now feel like I have just jumped out of an airplane without fully checking my parachute. My buddy Dr. SkullStars would not approve.

Bittersweet Sage said...

To cs10:

I loves me the math-speak, although I have to be careful about using it in blog posts. A few weeks ago I made a quip about the linear independence of a theological vector-space and got totally out-geeked.