My Writing Process (with pictures)

19 May 2013 9 Comments

by PartlyPixie in Becasue You Asked, Getting it done, NaNoWriMo Tips, The Novel, Writing Tools Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Over time, I've often been asked a lot to talk about my writing process – the nuts and bolts of what I do when I sit down to write. And so far, I've resisted doing so, partly because I don't really know if I have a writing process, and partly because its a very self-conscious thing to do, to pay attention as you write and figure out what is it exactly that I do?

So I have been watching, very coyly and indirectly, so as not to frighten myself into doing strange things like starting to smoke a pipe or drink absinthe merely to seem more writerly. And I've been able to piece some of it together.

But I have to clarify that this is not how I *always* write, it's how I write when I feel like writing this way – particularly when I need to feel more professional. In truth, it's probably how I write only 30-50% of the time. I've logged more words and writing hours in the last year flopped on the sofa with a cat next to me and marathons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the background than I have at a desk.

So if you want the CliffsNotes version of how I write, here it is:

Choose caffeinated beverage and preferred seating area. Commence writing.

There. If this is enough for you, feel free to go about your day.

Anyone looking more for the full monty, let's keep going.

And by no means should anyone try to replicate my way of doing things. This is what works for me, and everyone is different.

I normally stop on my way home from work at a coffee shop to get in a few hours of uninterrupted writing time before obligations of home (cat, laundry, friends, Netflix) can drag me in and distract me, and I've made a point of posting pictures (like the ones here) of where I'm writing over at the Facebook page if anyone wants to follow along.

Today, I don't particularly feel like getting dressed in real clothing, so I'm working at The Desk at home (more on The Desk another day). I chose a pot of hazelnut black tea, and gathered my tools, which are always nearby in my bag – I select purses for being iPad-and-notebook friendly.

When not at home, I choose a cafe with wi-fi and plenty of comfy seating. I prefer places where people go to study, places with 50¢ refills and quiet music on in the background. Though sometimes, I opt for a moody bar and whisky, if the writing demands it.

I usually start with checking in with the outside world – Facebook, twitter, a cursory glance at my email, sending a text or two I needed to send, maybe returning a quick phone call, just to clear off my to-do list, or to get used to the idea of sitting and working. I'll use this time to play a small game of some kind if I'm feeling reluctant or if my mind is busy from the day. Sometimes I stare at people or out the window. I fidgit, and I daydream, I listen to a song I've been humming all day.

I like to put in my headphones whether I'm at home or out, even if I don't play anything on them. Few things say “don't bother me” in the same way. I generally listen to music to set the mood of my writing. Sometimes I listen to ambient noise of brain wave stuff, or I'll have nothing at all and pretend to work while I take notes on the juicy conversation at the next table.

After maybe twenty minutes, I begin. The caffeine and routine have worked into my system enough and I'm ready. Even if I'm not ready, I get to work. The time I spend working – whether it's a few hours or thirty minutes – is mine, and I do what I want as long as it's toward the ultimate goal of having written, or having expanded my little writing empire online.

Some days I like to start with fountain pens and notebooks. I like to write by hand when I feel an extra reluctance, or when I need to ease into a scene, write lists of things to think about or do, or just to feel the weight of a pen in my hand. Some things need to be hand written first, and others need the clarity of typing them out, the secure feel of consistent font.

Most of the time, I write on my iPad. Ever since I got it last march, it's my favorite thing ever. I keep a notebook at my elbow for quick notes and brain drains while I work, and I write whatever is going to be written that day. Sometimes, like today, it's a blog entry. Other days, I have a flash of insight and want to get to work immediately on a scene or a new idea.

Sometimes it all snaps together like Legos. Sometimes it's like building with old wooden blocks that are warped and rounded at the edges, and I know it's rickety and needs a lot more work. But I have made the shape I want, and at the very least I can build it again out of sturdier stuff.

Sometimes I write snippets from several different scenes, scattered across several files. Sometimes I write one long, contiguous piece, and sometimes I rewrite something that still doesn't feel right to me.

But no matter how it goes, if I've sat down to write, writing gets done. There is no other option.

Generally, I get around 2,000 words done. Sometimes more, rarely less.

Unless I'm trying to reach a monthly goal like last year, I don't worry about how much I do. Some scenes need to be written slowly and with care, they need my full attention on them like a friend in crisis. Other scenes are easy and fall out in large chunks of words and scarcely need more from me than to be the one to write them down.

I allow some distractions while I work. I respond to texts and messages within reason. If someone I know comes in, I'll stop to chat. I'll update Facebook, or tweet. I let myself research until I find what I need to continue with the story (and since my current novel involves a lot of history and phrases from other languages, I do a lot of quick googles in the middle of a thought). If possible, I do research on my iPhone to ensure I don't fall into a information hole. But if I do get sucked in, it happens. I just pull myself out and write more.

I do my best to not stress about these kinds of things, the interruptions and blips, and to trust myself. I'm a writer, I am writing, and as long as that keeps happening, I don't worry much over the small things like how much or little I can use from my day's work. It's all building the shape of what I want, each day getting closer.

Best fortune cookie ever.

There is one thing I never let myself do: I don't look up writing advice in my writing time. Its better to have a big sloppy rough draft done than have wasted another hour or day reading about how to do it. If I need encouragement, I'll look for it later. Writing time is for writing. Period.

If I get stuck, I switch tasks, or stare out the window more, or just muscle through it and write bad, awful, terrible prose.

Some days I leave cranky and irritated with how it went, other days I feel empowered and ready to take on the next step. Sometimes it's like I'm lost in a fog with no compass and an inner ear problem, other times I can see the sprawl of my plot like a view from space.

But my day is always better if I've had time to write.

This is all how the process goes – when there is a process. I strive to never be chained to one way of doing things, but to be fluid with life – there isn't always a coffee shop or desk nearby when I need one.

I've been known to write some of my best stuff curled on irowboat's sofa while he played Arkham City or Tomb Raider next to me. I've been known to whip out my pen at parties, and to seek out corners in bars to get some notes down.

It all boils down to this gem of advice:

If you've come all this way with me, awesome and congratulations.

Now go write something with your own process, and don't give mine another thought.

 

Inspiration #25

08 May 2013 2 Comments

by PartlyPixie in Inspiration, Marketing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every now and then, I choose a passage of wisdom from someone who knows better and much more than I do about writing, life, the universe and/or everything.

Share and enjoy!

“We've been raised with a false belief: We mistakenly believe that criticism leads to failure. From the time we get to school, we're taught that being noticed is almost always bad. It gets us sent to the principal's office, not to Harvard.

Nobody says 'Yeah, I'd like to set myself up for some serious criticism!' And yet… The only way to be remarkable is to do just that.”

~from Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Distance, where I’ve been, and getting personal

03 May 2013 5 Comments

by PartlyPixie in The Novel, unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Shadows at the tide pools.

Forgive me for rambling, I'm rusty at this.

I've been away. Away from the blog, away from home, from myself, even from writing.

I needed a vacation.

Irowboat's birthday is in April, and we decided to celebrate with a road trip in my new car to California – traveling to San Francisco and down the coast to Los Angeles, finally ending in San Diego for a few nights before heading home. It was a chance to see friends (including a visit with the fabulous people of The Office of Letters and Light), to eat marvelous food, stare at gorgeous coastlines, and to research some locations for The Novel.

We had an amazing time. There were long walks, speakeasies, The Golden Gate Bridge, winding roads with no cell phone reception, tide pools, ghosts in hotels, caves used by smugglers and pirates of yesteryear, beaches at sunset, books by Douglas Adams on the car stereo, time with each other. And, of course, amazing friends, new, old, and in-between.

There was a day spent glued to television and twitter when bombs went off in Boston, the surreal contrast of our Great Vacation against the horror and fear of the news.

There was an impromptu stop at Monterey Bay Aquarium, hunts for clam chowder on the coast, adventure.

I barely wrote a word.

It gave me distance, this trip. It gave me time in air thick with history and wonder, time in the places my characters know and love and remember. Time away from myself and who I'm used to being.

That distance gave me the chance for all this writing, all this dreaming to change me, and I've returned different. I'm new, born into myself from the new reality of writing, wanting to write, afraid and excited by all I have to learn.

I can't help but think back to last year at this time. I was frightened, troubled that I might not make it. My insecurities lashed at me like tide on sharp rocks, catching me up in waves I thought might drown me. I knew I would never be the same – I could feel it as I wrote myself real. I've been feeling the changes in me, feeling the strain between who I was and who I am yet to be.

This trip, this distance from my everyday, has broken the bond with the past. I'm floating free. I don't know how to do anything anymore, not like I used to. I don't remember how to blog or to write, I have piles of emails to reply to and comments to answer and things I want to write and share here and elsewhere. And a novel to do.

I don't know where to begin. Not even a little. So I begin here, with you.

What is clear to me is that I'm ready to more myself. Here, elsewhere, anywhere. I can feel it, the desire to hold things back. I've given in too often, and fallen silent instead of saying what I wanted to say. But the time for that is over.

Now it's time to get more real, and more serious. Time to do What I Never Thought I Would.

I'm ready for this, whatever this is. I'm ready.

 

Winter, Compost, and Writing

06 Mar 2013 7 Comments

by PartlyPixie in Philosophical, unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Writing practice, March 6, 2013

“Today it smelled like recess.

Like the first hope of spring, when the layers of snow peeled back to reveal autumn's debris, the ruined plastic rakes with splintered handles, the tipped buckets half-full of leaves, the inevitable beloved stuffed animal, lost and flattened and mouldering. Like walking to school in sneakers instead if soured boots, mittens left in our pockets, giddy from the lack of weight on our small bodies.

Today it smelled like recess. Like green grass poking through the webbing of last year's leaves and clippings, like tulips peeking from muddy earth, like hackey sack and too-early soccer games and mud-spattered jeans. It smelled like frosty air blowing down from snow covered mountains, the promise that winter was not over, not yet.

But for a day, we ran along the blacktop and smelled the air and kicked at snowmen melted like the wicked witch, stick arms splayed up to the heavens. And if we squinted our eyes, we could almost imagine green things on the trees, flowers to pick, kickball games, and the hope of the long days of summer far in the distance.

Today, it smelled like that. Like hope and renewal, like green, fresh things pushing up from the old compost of yesteryear, like the buried things uncovered…”

 

All writing falls eventually into a winter; a silent time of reflection and deep white drifts of nothingness covering our minds. It is a time to relax, to contemplate, to compost.

In the phenomenal book Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg describes writing practice as composting our lives, churning memory and senses and thoughts over and over until they become the fertil soil of imagination. And from there, we find the richness in ourselves we seek. And then, we write with that richness of being.

I'm a believer in composting, in following the seasons of ourselves and our writing.

We do not write outside the existence of our lives. We write in the rhythm of living; seeking to dive in and transform the desperate handful of moments we have in the world into something outside of us, something that touches others in the small ways, comforting ways that make the world a richer place to live in.

We need to write—we need to write from deep within, to process and turn through the decayed selves we once were, the memories and smells and emotions and deeper truths to be found within, we need to spring, ever hopeful and green from the remnants of ourselves.

And to use what we have learned, to be who we are, and tell the stories that naturally grow from that fertile ground of our own hearts, and to own those stories without judgement, without reservation or fear or censorship.

Because our stories are the natural consequence of our lives, of our obsessions and pasts and hair color and names and hobbies and sorrows and scars and joys. They are part of us, raw and real and alive. It is important to accept our selves, to churn through our minds in search for what matters, what is ready to be said.

When the silence of winter comes over us, it is time to listen. It is time to churn through our words and memory, to fall deep into truth with ourselves.

And then write what springs green and new from our hearts, as soon as the frost is gone.

Photo credit: irowboat

 

Focusing on the Outcome

26 Feb 2013 3 Comments

by PartlyPixie in unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I want to be a writer.

Specifically, I want to write and publish books. Books about vampires and fairies and an organization I created called the Wish Granter's Union.

I want people to read what I write, to be inspired by my characters as I have been by other characters. I want to share what I know about life, about history, about people and love and all the other questions I may have an answer to, or at least a new way of asking the question.

And I suspect that you want something similar if you are here. We all want to touch the world in some way, in our own way be it selling things we want to share with the world, making art or music, or of course, writing.

And we need to remember that.

Which is why I have decided not to apply for Clarion West.

This last Saturday I spent eight hours in a martial arts seminar with one if the most incredible teachers alive.

We were practicing evading our opponent in slow motion, and looking for openings between their movements for our attack. We were to move aside or counter their motion, then find which tartet we wanted to hit for the desired effect, in this case putting the opponent on the ground.

I could evade well enough, but every time I started to hone in on my next move, I would get caught up in the method of it (exactly how do I need to grab his knee to make him fall backward again?) and I'd get hit. Start over, I get hit again.

My teacher had to remind me of somehting we've learned before.

“Focus on the desired outcome, not the method.”

We started again. My opponent hit the ground. I don't know what I did exactly, but it doesn't matter. I got what I wanted.

We must focus on the outcome.

It is so easy as writers to get distracted with the waving arms or our opponents. We spend time reading about craft, researching markets, trying to get into classes or magazines, fighting writers block, spending time arguing over the best method for characterization, whether or not to outline before writing (please stop it).

But we can do something different. We can focus on the outcome and trust ourselves to take the necessary actions to get there.

Because when fighting an opponent, we can hit their arm as hard as we want and it won't knock them out. If we want to knock them out, we must brush aside the arm and find a more viable target.

We must find our desired outcome.

Focusing on the outcome is how I wrote fifty thousand words every month for a year, regardless of the time constraints and the moping and internal struggle I went through, I always knew that all I needed to do was move toward 50,000 words. And I had to knock aside a lot of punches aimed my way, believe me.

But I knew what had to be done, and I did it.

And all of this is why I'm not applying for Clarion.

It is an outcome; a goal I could shoot for and a wonderful opportunity for someone who has the desire and need for close instruction, needing the encouragement and environment to learn to write every day.

But it isn't my desired outcome. It is a sideways step, a side mission tacked onto the path I walk. And unnecessary.

I want to write books. I want to publish. That was what last year was about too, about getting the habit of writing and the practice in of writing, continuing, finishing, repeat.

I'm ready, I think, to fly on my own. I'm ready to aim for the ultimate goal, the big one I've been dreaming of since I was very young. I have put in my time learning to write, now it's time to learn to make that writing readable and publishable.

It all comes done to trust. Trust in myself to know what needs to be done to get where I want to go, no matter what obstacles need to be knocked out of the way.

Which brings me to another maxim from Saturday's seminar.

“There is no success in giving up.”

 

The Daunting Rebeginning

20 Jan 2013 9 Comments

by PartlyPixie in 12 Month Reflections, unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Time to start again.

http://onedrawingaday.com/category/studio-1482-japan-fundraiser/

I believe it is a rule that we are always lost when we begin.

I have taken the last twenty days more or less off, a rest from the turbulence of the end of last year and the writing of the last twelve months. Time to recover and to remember how to just lay on the couch and watch television or to just read an email or a book. Time to get sick with a cold and shop for a new car to replace the one that died last year, and to realize just how much I enjoy driving fast. Time for new stories to bubble from my imagination, waiting to be told.

And now, now I remember that I am A Writer. And writers write.

How do I write? How do we ever write, how do we take this beast called plot and character, how do we describe the actions of life in black and white markings?

Beginnings are full of awkward abstractions. It is not like the business of my day job, making sandwiches for hungry professionals. With a sandwich, there are limited factors, a set rhythm – choose the bread and cut it apart, spread sauces and cheeses and meat in piles with vegetables and then wrap it in foil and start again.

Writing is like that, if you had to bake the bread for each sandwich, making it with no recipe, and imagine what kind of animal the meat came from before you set it down, if the person eating the sandwich could only taste what we describe in words about the food. And as we hand it over, desperately trying to remember if we described accurately the way the tomato seeds are small and yellow in the gelatin of the fruit pulp and how the addition of cheddar cheese should add some bite to the turkey. Or if that would detract from the point of the multi grain bread.

The beginning is always impossible. We reinvent not only the wheel, but the pen, the word, the practice of hands on keyboard. We must choose what invented mind to tell the story from, we must manufacture emotions and hope that what we think we feel is the same feelings others have. We choose one person to tell from, or several, if we are in the future or the past, and even in the present we must find the color of the drapes that the light filters through in the morning.

It is even worse if we have a clear picture, the half-formed Polaroid, because it all must add up to that feeling we had when the photo developed in our quaking minds. We find a good first line, and want the rest of the melody we write to match that cadence, and when we hit a sour note it jolts us down to our tailbone that we have gone astray. And we are so tempted to quit and let the unwritten story stay perfect in our imagination.

It all feels so impossible, to begin. Especially when we have begun before, and we cannot remember the way back. Because no two beginnings are ever the same.

You see, most mythology has it all wrong. In the beginning, there was not darkness, nor was there the void.

In the beginning, there is always chaos.

And we are the reluctant masters of that chaos. We peer into that squiggling mass of possibility and have the courage to plunge into the uncertainty and the despair and wonder and the feeling of too many worlds all crowding about us wanting to be born from the unknown.

Endless possibility can often look like nothing, and we call the frozen feeling of Too Much “writers block” and we give it power, we write books about writers block (irony), we believe that it is a demon but really it is just a shape in the din of everything possible in the universe waiting to be breathed full of life.

We must remember that the difference between nothing and everything is merely a tilt of the head, a grasp of a new beginning, the willingness to wander lost into a forest with nothing but a small stub of pencil behind our ear as protection and to know that we will be okay, because the hero always lives. Not only do they live, but they are stronger for it.

We must trust the chaos to have more than we will ever need, even when it only looks like blackness, the kind of blackness with sharp teeth hiding inside. But we are not afraid, even if we think we are. We invent the fear too, and so can we invent bravery. Bravery to be bold, to be terrible, to be brilliant, to write that first paragraph and continue on to the last.

And so must we begin. Again.

 

Unstuck: Do Something Else

13 Oct 2012 Leave a Comment

by PartlyPixie in October, unsticking Tags: , , , , , , ,

Sometimes, it is impossible to get started. We sit at the paper or computer, and as soon as we clear some mental space for ourselves and look for what we want to say, our minds crowd with The List.

You know The List. It's a demonic little thing that pops up and tells us all the things we haven't done yet. Laundry, emails, blogging, replies to comments on blogs, checking our bank accounts, doing the dishes, hanging those blinds we bought weeks ago to replace the awful vertical blinds that came with the house.

It goes on and on.

And no matter how hard we try to ignore that list of stuff, it simply keeps intruding. Now, we are in a battle of wills against our own mind. We want to write, we want to have our lives run smoothly, we want to avoid pissing off the people we live with by leaving too many dishes around and wearing smelly socks.

When The List just won't leave us alone, my advice is not what I normally have to say.

Stop writing and go do something else. Clear some of The List, little things that by the time we have thought about and rejected doing, we could have done them.

So take a minute and respond to some emails, wash some dishes and, for the sake of the gods, your socks. Take a walk, do that half hour workout… Whatever it is that tickles at us the most.

Then, come back to writing with a clear conscience. Sometimes, giving in to life's obligations allows us the space to find the words and get moving again.

And remember, some days don't write. Take time away from writing and go out to enjoy the weather, people, the sun (remember sunlight?). If you need a day away, take a day away. Take two. Whatever it takes to refresh ourselves a little and get The List whittled down enough to take time away from life and write without other concerns.

A post script: I took yesterday off myself from writing, so I will be posting twice tonight. We had to say goodbye to our dear Felix, and I spent the night drinking whisky with irowboat and remembering the good times. But I will be caught up soon in October's daily posts.

On Being Stuck, or, Embrace the Stuck

08 Oct 2012 4 Comments

by PartlyPixie in October Tags: , , , , ,

A lot of people ask me questions about writing so much. They ask me how I come up with ideas, where I find the time, if my boyfriend misses me, if I intend of self publishing, when I will edit….

But more than anything, writers will ask me how I keep from getting stuck.

And I have a little secret for you.

(If you have not seen The Avengers–and you should–then this is a little spoiler, but nothing major.)

In the movie, the Hulk, or in his non-green form, Dr. Bruce Banner, is asked how he contains his temper and keeps from hulking out. Yoga? Drugs? Deep breathing?

And just before the big fight scene, when he finally claims the beast within, he tells everyone his secret: “I'm always angry.”

Well, friends. How do I keep from getting stuck?

I'm always stuck. I never expect to not be stuck.

Stuckiness comes with writing like cake comes with frosting, like cats come with claws, like Joss Whedon comes with awesome. The expectation of sitting down and having everything come easy and free and to never have another bad writing day is a lie.

It's a lie that keeps us from writing.

Always expect resistance, and perfectionism, and the feeling that if only the muse would get her fat ass back to your side, everything would be okay. If we expect it, we will be prepared for it, and instead of breaking down into neurotic writers, we can grit our teeth and know it was going to be like this.

Hell, if this shit was easy, everyone would have a book published.

I'm going to talk a lot more this month about moving through being stuck and what kinds of stuck there are – I haven't forgotten. But first, I needed to lay down this ground rule:

We will always be stuck.

At least when the blank page is staring at us and the gremlins are screaming and the muse has flitted off again, we can always get schooled by the hulk, and be a big green badass.

 

 

 

October, or, NaNoWriMo Eve

02 Oct 2012 6 Comments

by PartlyPixie in NaNoWriMo, October Tags: , , ,

This is the last month before November, that great and terrible month where people across the world participate in a particular brand of insanity. Writing a 50,000 word novel in a month. Many of them have never written even a short story, even more have never finished any writing project.

If you have not signed up, then you ought to think about it. Even if you are not a writer, it is a life changing exercise. You will never see yourself, or the written word, the same way again.

And in honor of NaNoWriMo Eve, I will be squeezing all the writing knowledge I can from my mind and into this blog. And despite my previous derision for writing every day, I will be posting a blog each day on top of writing this month's novel.

There are lots of thing is want to discuss, from nano-specific advise to talking about how to get writing when things have stalled, to just thoughts about writing and living in general. I want to be as helpful and informative as I can. And if I happen to be entertaining, all the better.

If I have one great regret about this year, it is that I have not blogged more. The experience of writing so much has been difficult to translate into articles that make any degree of sense. I am learning so much as I go, and I want to share it all, as much of it as I can.

I want to do it before my brain melts next month. Because in November, I'll be writing two novels.

Warm up the straight jackets and fuel your jet packs.

November will be here before you know it.

 

Nine Down, Three (four) to Go! Or, what it is like to write 16,000 words in a day.

01 Oct 2012 3 Comments

by PartlyPixie in September, unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

There is no other way to say this: September was a bitch.

It didn't come smoothly, despite finding regular writing times every week, and despite my efforts to not fall behind. But I did. Again.

On the bright side, I only had 16,000 words left on the last day of the month instead of the 20,000 on the last day of August. It may not seem like a large difference, but when the last hours of the month are slipping past and the haze of so much to do hangs like one of those cartoon clouds that only hover over the gloomy character in the scene, raining only on their heads, every little advantage counts.

And in case any of you are wondering what it feels like to write somewhere around 20,000 words in a day, it feels like an absolute blur. It usually begins well, with lots of hope and the words all making sense. And then in the middle, it begins to feel like carrying a weight that is just a few pounds too heavy to carry uphill very far, and you're sure that if you can just get a running start you could get to the top before your arms give out, then it will all be downhill from there.

So you hurry. And as you hurry, you realize that the story is not coming together as readily as you hoped, that you are getting nowhere very quickly. In fact, hurrying seems to have slowed you down. So you decide you are hungry, you need chocolate and dinner and maybe a few gallons of alcohol.

And then you can get started again.

So you take a long break and hope that in the back of your mind you are solving the problems of the little world you have created, and you hope that you can remember all the name of the characters you introduced to flesh out the ending.

And as the night comes to a close, as the end becomes clear, you realize that it is all lost. You can't go on, there is nothing left to write, the story is dead,band you are stupid for letting it all get like this. You shut down the word processor and you close the computer and walk away. Sad, but with the absolute knowledge that you cannot finish, so why even try.

You go to the kitchen for some of that chocolate. And liquor. And you catch a fragment of story as it passes through your head, just a small glimmer of hope that there might be an actual ending after all, a single element to finally tie the mess together.

And you think of all the people you have told about what you are doing. And how they all believe in you.

So you pour another drink. A big one. And make a cup of coffee, even though it is now very late. And then get a bowl of peanut m&ms.

(Or if you are as lucky as I am, you have an amazing significant other to do these things for you, and friends who will remind you that “You've got this.” And these people hover next to you with with encouragement and tough love, like a runner with her coach following her along the sidelines, keeping her feet moving.)

And you open that word processor again, and you decide that as long as you finish before dawn the next day, you will count this as a win, even though there is an excruciating 8,000 words left to go. And every one of them feels like breathing through a straw with an asthma attack.

The alcohol helps. Until it makes you sleepy.

That's okay. You have coffee for this. It'll wake you back up, even if it is cold now.

The story jitters along, sparked by that little stroke of insight that happened in the kitchen. You long ago gave up on remembering all the characters' names, and have settled for things like “kind old guy,” and “suitor seven” to keep the characters straight. Your fingers start to feel vaguely numb, and your brain, if you could see it, would resemble some kind of terrible jello dish. The kind with carrots and marshmallows in it.*

This is your brain on too many words.

The last thousand words happen at long last in a burst of completion, if not speed. And there is exhilaration somewhere beneath a swaddling of fatigue as the word count arrives at 50,000, and then, miraculously, stretches a little bit beyond, just to wrap things up neatly.

You know, for when you get to edit the mess you just left for yourself.

But another day. Because now, you need to sleep. It's a good thing you have alcohol because your mind is chattering like a squirrel having a manic episode, and you wish it could have been so verbose only half an hour ago. Tell it to shush. Brush your teeth. Remember to tell Facebook, or twitter, or at least the cat that you have just performed a miracle.

And sleep. Sleep well.

Tomorrow, you'll write again.

 

*Forgive me for this. I did grow up in Utah.

 

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