I hit 52k in the novel today. Yay.
The last two chapters are skeletal, but at least I’ve hit the wordcount in the time frame. I’ll continue to flesh out those last chapters, at a slower pace, through Xmas.
I haven’t worked out at the gym in a month, due to this effort. I’ve consumed twice as much coffee as normal and slept much less. So it’s good to be done with the extreme phase of the project.
This ‘morning’ I am drinking very strong coffee and right now Fairytale of New York is playing. “It was Christmas Eve, babe / In the drunk tank” is one of the most brilliantly comical lyrics ever penned.
Last night I had drinks and great conversation with a friend, alternating from indoors to out. We ate pizza, played guitar hero (the brilliant PS2 rhythm game), then watched a super cheesy 80’s movie…a fantasy flick with the standard Euro synth pop. (Guess the movie, win a prize.)
Since my early twenties, I’ve had trouble sleeping past 8-9AM. This morning, after waking up earlier to feed the dogs, I slept until 1PM. No idea why, but I had the best sleep I’ve had in years. Strange, but amazing.
As a deliberate move on my part, I have no plans for Thanksgiving, other than whatever happens on-the-fly. If nothing happens, I’ll catch up on writing. I love that post apocalyptic feeling that cities and towns have on holidays, so I might ride my bike downtown later, just to soak up that vibe.
On the last day of work, I went to lunch with another friend (Ricardo) and we ate at Whole Foods. I had some tofu with seasonal glaze, stuffing, wild mushroom gravy and cranberry sauce. There’s something deeply psychological about holiday-oriented foods; that was a really satisfying (if super casual) meal. And, as an aside, whenever someone goes the extra mile and makes vegetarian gravy, I *drink* that shit…it’s one of those things the vegetarians really miss. Or at least Southern vegetarians. (Now if someone would just make vegetarian beef ribs…)
I finally finished writing an unholy difficult scene that I’ve been working on for days, consisting of a hunting trip. I kept wanting to rush through it, but managed to take it slow. (Not an easy thing for me…when I get impatient or excited, I want to move on to the next thing.) Several times, I jumped ahead and wrote bits of later chapters. But at last I’ve got a rough draft of the entire hunting incident, beginning to end.
As a bonus, here is another picture of Star, which is actually completely unrelated to hunting, except that sometimes she looks a bit like a deer and thus provides me with a decent subject line for this post.
I’ve been diligent lately and–over the last couple of nights–I’ve finally passed up the 50,000 word mark, having written just over 26,000 words of the new novel.
I’m managed to do this while clinging to my frayed social life and taking care of my dog. So some nights, I get home from work at 645pm, walk the dog, relax for a while, write like mad, then go out until 1am. (Sometimes I also write through lunch at work on the following day…a trick I highly recommend for making up your word count.)
It’s been well worth it to hang on to my social life, because periodically I meet someone really cool, or I have one of those classic nights out with a good friend. Both have happened from time to time lately. Yay, social life.
I haven’t been to the gym consistently in a few weeks, which is really unusual for me. So in some ways, I’ll be happy when the novel-in-30-days project is over. Thirteen days to go…and ~24,000 words.
This morning I stepped into the shower, like always, but ended up tumbling down on my ass, which is definitely not how I like to start my day. I put my foot down too close to the sloped part of the tub and went down hard, taking the shower curtain with me.
My dog Star sits in the bathroom with me while I shower. (I think she digs the steam…or maybe she just likes to see me naked.) So she freaked out (naturally) when all this chaos blew up around her, and, in a split second, she jumped to the only safe place…the bath tub.
So I was lying there, wrapped in the shower curtain, half in the tub and half out of it, with a dog practically on top of me. The water was raining down on the entire scene, lending it an absurd vibe.
I think I bruised my knee and hip. Ouch.
Eventually, I got up, restored the curtain and–since she was already wet–gave Star a quick bath. I don’t think she was very happy about the entire incident. What a strange way to start the morning. I’m sure Star felt the same way.