I was supposed to be bowling right now.
The social committee at my school planned a bowling outing for tonight. We've had two of them before. I've gone to both and planned on going to this one as well, but I wasn't feeling so hot by the end of the day today, and with a big family weekend about to commence I felt it would be better to take the night to pull back and rest up instead. So I'm kind of disappointed about this turn of events, even though I'm pretty sure it was the right thing to do.
But I figured that this might still would work out for the best. I know I won't get much writing done this weekend with everything else going on, and since I'm well ahead of my pace I'm really okay with that. For me reaching the 50,000 word mark isn't really much of a goal because I know I'll make it. After all, I'm five for five in that department since 2008. But this year I'd really like to complete the story in the November time frame, regardless of what the word count winds up being. I surpassed the word count last year, but still haven't finished telling that story. And it feels exactly as incomplete as it sounds.
So far things have been going pretty well this year. If you read my previous post you have some idea about the premise, and as of halfway through the month it's remained pretty true to what I originally planned. The ideas have been flying at my so hard and fast over the past fifteen days weeks I've taken to keeping a Notes file on my phone to write them down before I forget them, and I'll pack a small journal in my gym bag in case something comes to me while I'm working out. And when a really good idea comes along, it doesn't take much extrapolating before it can balloon its way into becoming a whole chapter, and then somehow it just takes turning the puzzle piece around enough times to figure out how it will fit in with what I already have. So as far as story construction goes, I'm very, very happy with the progress I've made.
Of course most of the writing ugly, and I don't mean that in a self-deprecating compliment-fishing way; I mean it's really ugly, as first drafts are meant to be. Any writing that comes this fast just doesn't have the care put into it that it should. Which is okay. As I recently explained to someone, the first draft is only the clay being molded into a rough shape of what the idea is supposed to be, and the real sculpting takes place in the subsequent drafting and editing and revising. This year I'm just working on the drafting without paying much thought to how much work will come afterward to make it into something readable. And actually, that approach has been surprisingly freeing. I seriously think I've come up with different lines and phrases that normally I wouldn't have tried out if I was being as intentionally careful as I normally would be.
But as happy as I am with my progress, all of this writing and thinking and tracking and planning and developing? This whole endeavor is no ride around the lake. I'd liken it to someone trying to complete a triathalon: No matter how prepared you think you are or how many times you've done it before, you aren't going to remember just how soul-draining of an experience it is until you're far enough through it to know the quickest escape is to just keep pushing forward and finish it off. My word count is well above the daily average, but there have been a few days when I've had to limp forward just to knock off a few hundred token words so I can tell myself I actually got something done. And frankly it gets easy to go a little scooters when you're doing this. The idea of down time simply evaporates, and you don't really get an appreciation for how important it is to have that time to just mentally recuperate until you aren't allowing yourself to do it anymore. Sleep isn't just restorative, but it becomes sanctuary... right up until you hit the night when you catch yourself dreaming about your characters. Which sometimes helps, but is also kind of unnerving.
So if anyone was curious about the process beyond what you see in my daily word count, maybe all of this will answer some questions for you. But for now, I've got another fifty minutes ahead of me I can use write now to get a few more pages done, and I have to jump at those time windows when they open.....
