Saturday, July 30, 2011

Writing Day

After hosting a friends party over Carmageddon weekend, and Comic Con last weekend (two things I have not discussed because of how infrequently I've been posting lately), I've been greatly looking forward to this weekend, where I've had literally NO PLANS for both Friday and Saturday.
Last night (Friday) I tried my first rising dough recipe and used it make a kind of huge empana/calzone thing using odds and ends of veggies. I cut it into squares, wrapped them, and put them in the freezer, so I can grab them and put them in my lunch sack over the next couple weeks. I also washed our pillows, which was really exciting (only to me, I understand) because even though I change the pillowcases, after awhile pillows get infused with the smell of dirty hair. Now they are a little lumpy, but they smell great!
I also watched TV! I saw the premiere of Project Runway, which I find consistently entertaining, despite the fact that I hated this season's billboards with the naked Heidi Klum with the scissors and "make it work" scrawled on her arm in sharpie. If it weren't an advertisement for the show, it would be some story about a serial-killing model. I also watched the second episode of Alphas. I'm going to give it a chance, and see if there's a long term serialized arc or any characters that grab me. They do seem to be setting something up in terms of both, but it's very light-handed, and right now the episodes are dominated by that "freak-of-the-week" procedural quality that makes me go "meh." But that's a bit unfair to judge after only two episodes, since the pilot has to cover so much exposition, and the second episode has the thankless task of taking tiny steps forward while essentially recapping the information from the pilot.
Now it's Saturday, and my only big plan is to WRITE. But now that the moment has come, I am a little intimidated by it all. It's a big chunk of time, but not really enough time. I remember the first time I went to Mexico to study Spanish for two weeks. I thought something really miraculous would happen and I'd come home practically fluent, but really, it was only enough time to realize that I didn't really know all the stuff I thought I knew from studying alone in the States, and to start to remedy that.
I'm pretty close to the end of the first draft of my novel, and it's tempting to think about coming to end of the draft this weekend, so that I can start to work on a languishing screenplay and some other things I have in mind--but it's really near impossible. And I am feeling insecure about control and quality. Basically everything I have to write for the next ten thousand words is tragic and sad. Somehow I hadn't realized that in the outline. I think it's because in the screenplay, we cut away to a character who provides comic relief, and so far in writing the book, I haven't cut away from my main character, since I've been using first person... It may be I'll need to do that, and that will be another whole project.
Anyway--it's time to begin!

3 comments:

  1. Good for you Susan. I hope you made great progress. (btw - hi)

    I find it SOOOOOO hard to carve out any meaningful time to write - and it always seems complicated by the project and where I am in the process. I love climbing into my work for an entire day or a weekend when I have the house to myself, but I'm finding that if I grab on to an hour or two as often as possible it helps immensely. The project stays top-of-mind and I feel like I'm actually making some progress. I'm finally getting to a point where I stop myself most evenings before I get to the television or start digging into iTunes and go back to the keyboard.

    Slowly but surely... Slowly but surely... :)

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  2. Great to hear from you, Jeff. BTW, you have THREE blogs. Awesome.

    I agree with you wholeheartedly about the little bits of time keeping a project top-of-mind. Some days all I get is 25 minutes at lunch, but even a few hundred words is a few hundred words more, and it makes it easier to open the document again the next day

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  3. Yes - three neglected blogs...
    I enjoy reading yours though - maybe you'll inspire me to start paying better attention to mine...
    ttfn

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