it’s an error to read your email first thing in the morning. i’ll leave it at that. <le sigh>.
clear and sunny day, 9:05 a.m., coffee ready. will do my writing and then go for a run.
yesterday was a particularly good day – enough sleep, a rare break from catering (this week upcoming will be full-on). I did some food puttering (stuff that didn’t need to be done but was fun to do, including some bread left to rise overnight in the fridge, that did just that, and ballooned up into a space alien, so i have to work on that recipe clearly, and my husband will eat anything). i did some cleaning. i wore my fuzzy socks. i read an old magazine from february (New Yorker) in the tub for an hour.
and i thought about rayna and what happens next all day. i woke through the night with ideas and i could hear bits of conversation.
then it’s morning, i’m in bed at 8:15, and i think “this will never work, i don’t know what to do, this is a dumb idea, why am i doing this to myself, if i just wrote when i felt like it that’d be never, well i can do 100 days and then quit.” and part of the problem is that – like early sobriety with a bit of momentum – i can now see how much else needs to be done. i can see now, literally, the whole second book. i realize that there are more threads in this book that will lead to other stories. i thought the second book would be a new character set, maybe the head of google has a booze problem, that kind of thing. but now i realize that rayna and mel and beet and laz and jack and steve and don and her sister annie, and her parents, are all in this too. and i want to know more about them. maybe they each get a book. or maybe …
and maybe this writing in front of the world thing – i do love it – but it’s new, and maybe i’d like to talk about the process of this to some other writer groups, so maybe the NEXT book i do i’ll do some more ‘promotion’ first … and then i think, for fuck’s sake. write day 66. and then go for a run.
madly off in all directions.
familiar boozer traits.
this book thing is the closest parallel to quitting drinking that i’ve had since i quit drinking. it all ain’t pretty. BUT there are 66 days of accumulated writing, not perfect, but day after day strung together. and some of the biggest ‘how to’ problems i’ve been learning while in motion (the temptation of course is to stop and learn things and then research some more and then ‘begin all over again because i’ve started wrongly’). i continue to switch between third person present (Rayna sees) and third person past (Rayna saw), and first person present (I see), and first person past (I saw). none of them seem right (yet). i have to be ok with it not being right (yet).
some days i’m better at that than others.
today on my run, i will buy skinny multi-coloured heirloom carrots, a shoulder of pork (to make pulled-pork mid-week), and a bucket of greek yogurt for my husband. not enough treats for me: ok, i’ll add raspberries. and flowers).
not enough treats.
not enough back-patting.