Krunk

Yesterday was the kind of day where I spent a lot of time scrambling to catch up with others' poor time management (or downright lack of consideration). I don't want to detail every instance, but it's not my favorite way to work. (On the other hand, I did compose several haiku for ThinkGeek's ongoing contest during my lunch break. I just have to decide which one I like best before I send it in.)

And then I lost a chip out of my favorite ring, and thanks to stacked meetings for both Matt and I, had to scramble to get dinner. Thank goodness for Matt, who cheerfully and uncomplainingly unloaded and re-loaded the dishwasher while I made lunches.

Still, I was so exhausted by the time the kids were in bed that I thought briefly about just sticking a fork in the day and going to bed early. (No, early. Like 8:45.)

But I'd skipped writing on Sunday, too, so I made a cup of coffee and told myself that I didn't have to write a lot, I just had to push forward until I'd finished the coffee. Just enough, I promised myself, to have a snippet for the writing blog. The story was 80% done, and I knew I didn't have the energy to write a sex scene, but I thought I could push it to right at the beginning of the sex scene, and then I could polish that off later.

An hour and a half later, I'd only written 500 words, but the more I looked at them, the more I thought that this story might not end with a sex scene anyway. It would, in fact, have been counterproductive. Which means, I think, that I might be done with the draft. So I'm going to let it rest for a day or two and then go back and re-write about two thirds of it (no, really, it's kind of rough and needs a lot of polish) and then it might be worth throwing over a wall.

So it wasn't the best-ever day, but it could definitely have been worse. (Which puts me in mind of Neil Gaiman's words of wisdom about writing:

When writing a novel that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: "House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day." "Got call this morning to say I'd got Nobel Prize for literature. Wrote less than 300 words (285) probably unusable, so lousy day."

Yes. That's it, exactly.