I have the day off and I’m still in my flannel pajamas. I’m finding it hard to get motivated to get dressed or do anything productive when it’s 56 degrees and overcast. I usually love days like this. Dreary autumn days when I don’t have to do anything and I can curl up and watch a movie or read or call friends. Lately, I haven’t been able to enjoy my days off as much as I should. I’m sitting here with little to do except pay a few bills and go through last week’s mail, but I don’t feel relaxed. I feel… tense.
It could be writing withdrawal. I definitely haven’t been putting in the time I should be lately. It’s funny how that can affect my mood. No matter how many stops and starts I experience with my writing (and there have been many), I always come back to it. The need to write, to create. It is wonderful and awful and exhilirating and frightening and overwhelming and exhausting.
Sometimes I wonder why I would be given this driving need to write if I wasn’t supposed to succeed at it. To fail at the only thing I’ve ever had a sustainable passion for would be a very cruel joke. Success, of course, can be measured in a variety of ways, so I suppose my own success could be debated. But it’s my definition of success that matters, right?
There is one week left of October. How did that happen?
So much to do. I have a couple of deadlines to meet, a book outline to finish drafting and a long weekend to fill with plans. I think I’ve talked myself out of a Halloween party, though. Maybe an Election Day party instead? I’ll be a nail-biting mess, might as well share the joy.
Next Monday is November 1st, so it’ll be write, write, write for me. I’ll probably track my progress here somehow, though I won’t be posting anything I’m writing. If you know me (and even if you don’t), please be sure to nudge me along in November. Guilt me into writing, if necessary. Ask me how many pages I’ve written, for instance. I might also respond well to bribery, if you’re so inclined.
My writing goal for November is 10 pages a day. That is extremely ambitious and would have me making the 50,000 word goal by November 20, and-- if I could sustain that level of production-- 75,000 words by the end of the month. It won’t happen, but it’s something to shoot for. The book I’m outlining should come in at around 75,000-80,000 words, whenever I do finish it.
I have to say, I’m excited about the prospect of drowning myself in words next month. I’m sure my excitement will fade as the days pass and my carpal tunnel makes me ache and what I’m writing begins to read like crap and I’m having nightmares about editors telling me I suck.
Tell me again why I’m going to do this to myself?
Caution: Ramblings ahead. I will try to make the transitions smooth.
It could be the weather (cold, rainy, dreary). It could be because I’m at work (again). It could be the lack of heat in the building (yesterday, it was 95 degrees, today it’s 60). It could be my enthusiastic allergies (what the hell is ragweed?). It could be all these things. Whatever it is, I think I’m getting sick.
I am not tired, however. Sleep is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
If I weren’t working, I’d be at home in my pajamas. You know what other people do on cold, rainy, dreary Sundays? They go to the library. Not to read, though. At my library, books are not the main attraction. People go to my library to sit at a computer and play solitaire or chat in chat rooms or peruse desperate singles at Match.com. Or worse, look for penpals who have a lot of time on their hands (and who have been wrongfully accused, of course). That’s what people come to my library for. Oh, and they bring their children who have as little interest in reading as their parents. The kids want to play games (on the computers, of course) or watch music videos. Oh, and chat. You’re never too young to chat.
I remember thinking, before I started working in a library, how wonderful it would be to be surrounded by books and people who love them. I didn’t expect it to be academia, but I did expect a certain level of intellectual stimulation from my experience (never mind that I work in the children’s room). Ah, how my hopes were dashed. There may be, in some remote corner of the universe, a library where the books are beloved and the patrons are readers. I’d like to work at that library.
When I was a kid, I collected a lot of things. Books, of course. Dolls, too. I wasn’t a play-with-the-dolls kind of little girl, though. I was more the put-on-the-shelf-and-admire-the-dolls kind of little girl. I wonder if that’s why, when other women are clawing at each other to hold a baby, I’m content to sit and watch? I’ll take a turn at the baby-holding, but I don’t usually volunteer for it (it’s usually the baby who wants to come to me).
I understand baby lust, having experienced it a few times. But I’ve never been one to obsess over something I don’t-- or can’t-- have. My baby lust is more like fleeting, wistful thoughts than a single-minded quest. Babies don’t stay babies very long, after all. Maybe I just like sleep (and sex) too much to feel that kind of overwrought yearning. Maybe it’s just pure selfishness.
There is a quote, and I can’t think of who said it (I want to say Mae West, because it does sound like her) that goes, “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.” Good quote. Almost as good as the classic, “We all have wings, but some of us don’t know why.”
Yeah, I’m quoting INXS. It’s that kind of day.
What’s it all about?
Life. Love. Writing. Editing. Sex. Books. Romance. Movies. Friendship. Photography. Teaching. Coffee. (Lots of coffee.) Travel. Feminism. Academia. Insomnia. Memories. Experiences. Rants. Raves. Reviews. Babies. Pregnancy. Motherhood. Insanity. Musings of an insomniac writer. Want to know more?
