(R.H. Herron)
Lookee! I've been knitting!
It's the Cade sweater, for the book. The pattern is as yet unavailable, but it will be someday, promise.
In other news, I've been writing. Nano is fun, but I'm tired, and I'm out of words for the day, so I'll just give you my view from my lunch table today (Bethany and I worked there — can you imagine a better place to write?):
The Golden Gate is just visible in the background….. This is from Greens, in Fort Mason. A gorgeous, celebratory day.
(How many blog posts are titled that this morning?)
My agent said last night in Brooklyn there was dancing in the streets. She went out and danced (I adore her) and said that it looked like Fame: literally people dancing on top of taxis. That made me want to cry all over again. Yes. We had fireworks and gunfire (both are always in full supply in my neighborhood) and honking. Joy.
Now. Back to writing. I'm at the cafe. The coffee guy who knows me added a sugar to my coffee since I usually get it that way, the first sugar I've had in a month. I should have had him remake it, but it's a holiday, right? Celebration!
I'm at 11,665 words. Want to hit 13,000 today. Here I go.
Oh, HELL yeah. I cried through that whole thing. And the noise in Oakland was great.
So happy. Welcome back.
Nano wordcount: 8,020 words. I am right on track so far. I love the feeling I'm getting with this whole WRITING thing. I've been editing so long that I'd forgotten how wild a rush it is, writing the first draft. I loe that whole OHMYGOD WHAT'SGOINGON thing that occurs. Hold on, it's going to be a bumpy, if exciting, ride.
I love the little surprises that happen when you're writing — those pieces that fall onto the page with a satisfying clink, the sound of understanding. Oh! This is what's going to happen next, and that's why that happened in the last chapter! It's like certain things are meant to be written, and you don't know it until you get there, but when you DO get there, it just works. It feels good in the brain, like a mini-massage. I'm not even kidding; that's what it feels like.
It happens in bigger chunks in revision, where whole segments of writing suddenly beg to be moved forward, or back, or worse, erased. In the case for erasing, I like to control-X big segments like that out and paste them into another document which I figuratively clutch to my chest. I shall never lose these words! My darlings! And then, always, the next time I look at that document, a month later, those words are dumb and outdated and perfectly ready for the big delete.
Writing is good stuff, yo. Yep.
Hey, folks. Serious subject now, one I'm not equipped to deal with. But my girl dee ann, sadly, she's equipped. And boy, howdy, is she.
Go read what she says about cancer. She's an expert, and I think her entry shows a part of the disease that we gloss over, way too often. It's not an easy read, but I think it's a necessary one.
Dude, I couldn't sleep last night, thinking about Nanowrimo. That's not like me. But I knew how I wanted it to start, and I kept re-starting it, even in my dreams. I do NOT like writing in my dreams. It's frustrating, to see the words, and then to try to re-read them, and they've suddenly changed.
But I've got 5,011 words down. I have a schedule:
Workdays: 1,000 words a day, written in the morning. I will get up at the ungodly hour of 3:45am. I leave for work at five, and I only take about 15 minutes to get ready, so that gives me an hour. I can easily get a thousand words in an hour, even while half-asleep. At my top speed, I can get two thousand an hour, but that's when I'm ON. And I know when I get home at 7pm that I am DEAD and completely unable to talk, let alone write, so:
Weekends: 5,000 words a day. From 8am-12pm, I'll write (like I did today). Four hours is good for 5,000 words (about twenty pages), including drinking coffee/eating/wandering/cleaning up the dog-vomit breaks. My weekends are always either three or four days long, so that's good for building the word count. My target word count is an arbitrary 76,000 words this month.
I don't know if I can pull it off. But I'm going to try.
Luckily, La's totally into doing NaSoAlMo again, so she's off recording in her room while I'm writing. It's nice.
Now: It's been POURING this morning and I'm loving it. I love rain, especially the very first good rain. I opened the window in front of my desk and Waylon and Willie and I sucked in that good smell of grass, rain, and asphalt.
But now we're tired. I might take a nap. Like this:
Willie and Harriet are lying right next to me, right NOW, doing that. It's even cuter in person.
This was from our walk yesterday, but this is how I feel today. It's a good day. Nap. And then some cooking for the work week, which starts tomorrow.
Huzzah! Nano is here!