Days 20 & 21: In the final stretch

Word written: 8,179
Books lost: 2 but I think they're at the pizza parlor where we stopped for dinner
Number of bugs Chap has eaten: 17

Yesterday was not a good writing day. I spent most of my time in the library reading my old Livejournal from when I worked at the OPO. I had just moved to Philadelphia and was confused and scared and didn't quite fit in. I couldn't at first figure out the grid system of the city, and didn't feel tattooed enough to live there. I had no money, knew no one, and missed my friends in State College. Plus, I was starting a new job where the first order of business each week was to go over who died over the weekend and donated their organs. Reading through it reminded me to try to work in that conflict--what it's like to struggle with money, with friends, with dating, with drinking too often at bars, with not knowing where the thrift stores were. I got my words done by copying relevant passages in case they are useful later, especially the descriptions of the city. My first impression of it after having spent six years in State College was that it had so many homeless people. I would see three or four a day, all in various stages of distress, but everyone else around me seemed non-plussed. I guess I learned to notice it less as time went by.

Last night, we figured out how to connect the DVD player to the TV and in this way, we ate popcorn and watched Election, a movie I saw years ago but didn't remember clearly. It's amazing that you could have this film where you're basically against the young girl (Reese Witherspoon) who was sexually assaulted by an older teacher. Later, Ilse noted that all of the characters seemed destined to repeat the same mistakes; that though everyone's circumstances had changed, none of them experienced personal growth.

Today was a little bit of a better writing day, but I am needing to organize and revise now. I have 129 pages single spaced for July, plus another 56 pages single spaced from last November. If I go back and take out all of the sister stuff, I will have significantly fewer pages, and that scares me. I'll do that now though, just to see where that leaves me.

P.S. When I take out the sister stuff, I have 100 pages instead of 129. But I'm saving the scenes in case I can use them another time. For that reason, I have 34 pages single spaced of stuff about a dead sister. That's 179 pages double-spaced, give or take three pages for spacing issues.

Chap in the kitchen, in search of bugs and cookies.

Find the grammatical error in this poster at Left Hand Coffee Shop, where a dirty chai costs $6.

Comments

Aimee said…
the last line should say "fewer" rather then "less"

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