three hundred

I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't written anything lengthy here this week. There's a reason. I've been busy with my novel. I wrote -- well, I'm not sure exactly where I started on Monday, but I think I wrote something like four thousand words this week, maybe even five. Which is rare for me, since I usually grab my writing time between the time I drop Damian off at school (at noon, supposedly, but often later) and pick him up (at three) but then you have to factor in time to eat lunch (half an hour, usually) and drive to the library and then back to school (fifteen minutes) and time to wind up the courage to plunge back into the ongoing stream of words. So I have maybe an hour and a half of good writing time two or three times a week. Which is absurd since I do have some time to myself every day but I've been using it for other things. Like exercise, paying bills, running errands, responding to email. But you know what? I'm a writer. So what if we don't have enough food to last the week? We can make do. I have to write. So this week I did. I wrote every day.

This brought the total page count up to 304.

I'm buzzing with it. It would be a lie to say I never doubted I'd complete the novel. Of course I've doubted it, just like I've doubted that the result will be readable. But now it seems very much like I will in fact get to the end, and not too long from now. And that feels huge.

A novel. My first novel. Yes, I've written nearly a dozen screenplays. And yes, at the end of each one, I said "whew!" and flipped through the printed pages with a satisfied sigh: "I wrote that. All of that. Yes, me." But a novel, that's diving into the deep end of the pool. A tome. And this novel in particular is like writing a dream state, it's all about emotion and tone. It's realistic but yet not. It's a challenge.

My brain is tired. Tomorrow I want to do something to get out of my head. I think I'll paint the living room yellow.

Posted by Tamar at January 30, 2004 10:36 PM