2:32 a.m. - 2002-11-04
Finding my place
Feh. It's late, I'm tired, I just ate one too many Starbursts, and I'm grouchy.
First, I shall address the Starburst situation. CRACK! That shit is LEGAL CRACK! I had this CRAVING for a Starburst and I had to go to TWO STORES at MIDNIGHT just to get my fill. I mean, REALLY. It's the pink ones that get me. They're just so delicious!
This weekend has flown by in a not altogether unpleasant way. To add to my impressive list of what I did on Friday, yesterday (Saturday) I ran a rehearsal, worked for three hours, wrote 2500 words, went to the grocery store, had dinner with the Boy and his step-dad, went to a party, came home slightly tipsy, hung out online for a little while, and then went to bed. All in all, it was a pretty productive day � not quite as action-packed as Friday but nonetheless a busier day than about three of my regular days put together. Today, I slept in late on purpose (as in, woke up at nine, said "the hell with this!" and forced myself back to sleep until after 11:30.), got up, mooched around a lot, checked my email, had lunch, raked a large section of yard, read a few hundred pages of my book, and then made myself a place.
You know, a place. That place that everybody ought to have. The one where you go when you need to write, or read, or just sit and not deal with anything. I am particularly firm on the fact that writers need a place. In my dreams, my place is an attic with big bay windows and a cushy window seat filled with pillows, surrounded by bookcases and with one of those huge rolltop desks that I can sit at and just write for hours and hours. I can see it, my place. I know what it will look like.
But for now, I must content myself with what I have. My sister passed on her old desk to me, and we brought it into the house today. It's a nice little desk � I could use a little more legroom, but it has lots of drawers in it and has quite a big writing surface, so I am inordinately pleased with it. I immediately tackled making it into my place. The first thing my mum and I did was deal with the lighting, which is positively awful in our basement. A few lamps made short work of that, though, and the lighting is now actually quite pleasant. I brought down the laptop, and plugged that in, and put my stereo down there (I spend very little time in my room, and even less time alone in my room, so I decided it was worth the sacrifice of non-radio music in my room.), as well as some good writing CDs. I brought down my beeeyouuutiful dippy pens that lovely souls gave to me, and set my ink bottles in fetching positions. And then I hustled myself back upstairs to this computer and found a number of excellent quotations on writing, which I then proceeded to print off. I now have a small inspiring collage up in front of my desk, just as I've always thought I should do. I hung my dreamcatcher in the middle of them, in the hopes that maybe a few of my dreams will stick around long enough for me to write them down.
And so now, I have a place. I stayed down there for quite some time, writing furiously and gaping at how exactly my novel is coming together. I sat for some time trying to decide if I should introduce another character or not, and after pondering that for some time I got distracted by various other things like dinner and the new Simpsons Treehouse of Horror (which, incidentally, got a big fat Meh from me and the Boy.), so I didn't get back to the novel again today. I have now cleared 8000 words, and had quite a remarkable realisation while shooting the shit with the Boy after the Simpsons.
I'd struggled through dinner trying to decide about this potential new character. I had no clue who they would be or how they would fit in � I spent a bit of time today doing a character map to figure out how everyone is related � and I realised that the reason it was such a struggle to make this decision is because there ARE no more characters. The ones I have written, for better are for worse, are the characters in my novel. I can't change that no matter how hard I try.
It was a mind-boggling realisation. You always hear of people saying that their characters take over and tell the stories themselves (my main character, Kate, is named for Kate Bloomfield, Jean Little's glorious heroine who apparently is entirely independent of her creator and tends to come stomping into Jean Little's head on a semi-regular basis. I adore both the character and her creator, and decided that this would be a fitting tribute.), but such a thing had never happened to me. Nor anything close. I'd always just plodded along, writing my non-fiction and occasionally thinking about fiction, but never sitting down to give it any real effort.
Now that I've started, I don't think I can stop. The characters are there in my head, fully developed. I can talk to them, listen to them, get to know them, and then I can put them down on paper. They don't do what I want them to do, but I like what they want to do and so it works out well. And now I have my place, and my people to live in that place, and I feel all of a sudden like I'm this honest to goodness writer. And part of me feels like there should be a parade, or a plaque, or something. Something to commemorate that I'm finally doing what I've known I should be doing since I was four. I was four when I wrote my first story, dictating it carefully to my mother. It's been a winding road since there, and I've been distracted many times along the way, but at the core of myself, deep down, I've always known I will be a writer.
The question is, who in the hell is going to pay me for this, and why does it have to be so damn hard to do what you WANT to do with your life?
Dammit. I knew it couldn't be that easy. Anyone want to be my patron? I make good cookies.
