Words written: 4,407
Money spent on groceries in Montauk where everything is four dollars more than it should be: $150, including a Funky Monkey smoothie for $6
Number of ticks removed from co-attendees: 4
Slower start today though it seems Chap's natural time to wake up is about 8 a.m. which is reasonable. Didn't write in my notebook much today, and then we went into town at about noon, ate a Funky Monkey and a salad and then went to the library. Got all of my writing done there in about two hours, focusing on scene and going back to a Stephen King book, Joyland, which is really more of your standard mystery/thriller, and he does some cheating things like writing, But I didn't know that then...Which is meant to keep you reading. How this worked for me today was that I stayed almost exclusively in scene, and described her apartment (really my apartment on Winton Street in Philly), and what it's like to ride the subway early in the morning, that anxiety I always felt when approaching the subway because if you hear it coming, you've already missed it and risk breaking your neck on the stairs if you rush to catch it. But then a cat showed up, and it's amazing how in a matter of days, the whole narrative can move from one approach to the next, and I feel like the voice and timeline is completely inconsistent. I have 58 pages single spaced from this week alone, and tried to print them up today, but the computer here is a Mac and so it wasn't reading my Word doc. Managed to print 12 pages and read through some of them, and here and there was an arresting image, but I still don't know how it holds together. You're supposed to trust the process and keep going, but the other part of the process, at some point, has to be revising, cutting, refining, focusing, and I'm not there yet. I have to just think it's okay, and to keep going, but it never seems like I'm working hard enough or long enough, and I haven't yet felt that click of enjoyment writers like to talk about in the process. You get into a groove and you find yourself uncovering new things, and the writing spins away under its own steam. I can keep my momentum going for a good amount of time, but it feels like it's spiraling and spiraling into different directions without truly going anywhere. A lot of it also seems faked to me--what do I know about being in the OR while someone's removing a kidney? I've been reading books about surgery and transplantation and I can echo the scenes I remember from them, but I am certain I am getting much of it wrong.
And yet one must keep going.
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| Chap, last walk of the night, constantly distracted by noises. |
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| Find the dog in this photo. |
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| This is a vertical representation of the two dog bowls in the kitchen, one for Chap and one for Talluka. |
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