Thursday, January 25, 2007
The other night my new thesis advisor was in town to read from her recently-published book at A Different Light, where we arranged for me to give her my book-thus-far. That evening also marked the end of the first week of the semester, and my first weekly ten pages were also due. This breaks down to two pages a day, five days a week, and I’m happy to report that I met this goal, and am three days into my second week, with equally satisfying results. Two pages a day may not sound like much, but I’m quietly ecstatic about fulfilling my rather narrow, self-defined purpose in life.
After months of not-writing at distracting coffee shops, and not-writing in my bedroom (despite my beautiful new desk from Room and Board that – since it couldn’t fit through the hallway –had to be carried down the side of a hill and pushed gingerly through my bedroom window), I discovered that if I took my laptop upstairs to the dining room table, turned off the internet connection, drank a Red Bull or three, and stared at a blank Word document for an hour, I could crank out two pages of really bad writing. The months of not-writing have left me thick-headed and rather stupid on the page, and every five minutes or so I stand up and pace the fifty feet from the table to the living room window and back, several times, till I grow a bit dizzy and have to sit down again.
By the end of two pages I’m so proud of myself that I have to text the Manly Fireplug and tell him of my progress. He very kindly congratulates me on this stunning achievement, and then I sort of collapse in an exhausted heap. Did I tell you I’m currently writing about the period when I was fourteen, and…well…was ANYONE happy at fourteen?
So I printed out the book-thus-far for the advisor, and tallied it up; as of today, I’ve written 200 pages. This probably isn’t as interesting to you as, say, my sex life with the Manly Fireplug. Maybe neither of these subjects interest you. But I don’t have much else to offer you, becaue I’m not really thinking about anything except these two subjects, more or less continuously. It’s what I got, people. Cut me some slack.
