11:49 p.m. - 2002-11-01
Where I need to be
Man. I think I'm insane. So far today, I've written 4200 words of novel, started making things for the crafts fair on 3wa, taken a huge exam after studying for a number of hours for said exam, talked to a number of friends, spent too much time in chat, talked to my mother for 45 minutes, ate a leisurely dinner, gone to the grocery store, had a leisurely conversation with the Boy, done some dishes, watched some of the hockey game, and read 100 pages of my book.
Yes, Microsoft Word, that is a long sentence. Do you know why? Because I've done a lot of things today. I really do think that's the most productive day I've ever had in my life. It's amazing what you can get done when you put your mind to it.
Of course, this brings up the rather unpleasant idea that maybe I'm lazy. Wait, scratch that. This is not a new revelation. Looking at that list, though, is a reminder that I am in fact incredibly lazy. An average day for me is lucky to have half that amount of stuff done on it. I'd done more today by noon than I do on a normal day. That's just pathetic. I mean, really. I am young. I have relatively decent amounts of energy, or should do in theory. I am intelligent. What the hell is my problem?
I think that I will not worry about that too much and instead enjoy the fact that I got so much done today and will hopefully be equally as productive tomorrow. Maybe NaNo is what I needed to finally get me off my ass. (Well, ok, no, it isn't, because writing 50 000 words is going to require a lot of on my ass time. But you see my point.) I enjoyed myself today. Making my craft fair stuff was satisfying and soothing � mindless, but not too mindless. I had my Shakespeare in Love CD burbling in the background, and it is the most motivating CD I own. I'm not sure why that is. Something about the images of Shakespeare writing to that music gets me going, even though when I stop to think about it I know he didn't. Perhaps it's the idea that the music will allow just a little bit of his genius to rub off on me.
And maybe it's working. Today, I felt like a writer. Regardless of how good what I wrote was, of whether anyone will want to read what I wrote, the fact remains that I wrote. I set those words down on paper, words that did not exist before I created them. It's been years since I wrote fiction. I can't remember the last time I wrote this many words of anything. But somehow, something else took over. I sat, staring at the computer screen, my fingers flying, and watched my story take over. I got up for a moment and found myself startled by the world I'm living in, so immersed in the world I have created that the jarring reality took me by surprise. I fully expected the weather outside to match the weather inside. That moment of genuine surprise when I saw the sun shining made me feel more like a writer than anything I have ever felt before.
It made me want to be able to do this. To do this every day. To wake up, get up, pad around in bare feet for a while and then sit down at the computer and write. I have always known that I wanted to do that, but before today, it was a vague desire, one that sat at the back of my mind, never entirely gone but never entirely there. Today, I know what that life is. I caught a glimpse of it in that moment when the sunlight fell on me, and I want it back. I know now that I could live that life. Today is the difference between thinking I'd like to be a writer and thinking I can be a writer. I don't know how long it will take me to get there, and I'm not in that much of a hurry to arrive. All I know is that eventually, it's where I need to be.
