3:37 p.m. - 2003-11-03
All I can do
My novel is going so well I can hardly believe it. I'm already more than a quarter of the way to my goal - I passed 12500 words on my lunch break today. The kicker, though? I think it's pretty good. The plot is moving along at a pace that's reasonable but neither rushed nor sluggish. The characters are developing nicely, and I've got a wee little crush on my main character.
I said the same thing last year - flipping through my archives, I could have written last year's entry today, except that on the first day this year, I wrote double what I did last year - 9000 words. This year, I wasn't panicked at the thought of writing fiction for the first time in years. Fiction is slowly becoming familiar territory again, seeping back into my brain after years of drought.
I still long for the things I wanted last year at this time. I want to get up every day and do this. I want to abandon every other aspect of my life and wrap myself in words that I create. I don't want to sit at my desk and occupy myself with mindless minutiae. I want to go back to the world my characters inhabit, wander through the house I created with them and listen to their stories. I want to shut out the real world and disappear to theirs, to find out how things end and how they get there.
Last year, while I was writing a novel, I fell into a depression that consumed me for a while. The knowledge that I knew what I wanted to do and didn't know how to do it was almost too much for me - the gaping emptiness of the future was overwhelming. Now, though, that I've seen the real world, lived in it for a few months, and started to find my place in it, I know that it doesn't matter that it's going to be hard. I have to write. I have to. I can't do anything else and be happy with it. I don't care if it means living with my parents for the next three years or living in a crappy apartment. I don't care if I never get to go to movies or eat out or buy new shoes. I have to write, and that's all there is to it. Nothing else really matters.
It seems more doable now, somehow. The addition of Giles to my life (my new laptop, for those who haven't been keeping up) has made it seem much more possible to do nothing but what I love. And it seems so stupid not to at least try. There are so many people in the world floundering to find their great passion. How could I live with myself if I let my passion lay idle?
I couldn't. And so, once again, the only thing I can do is write.
