I dug into my journal entries of six years ago for this post. I was working on, at the time, the first novel I ever actually completed.
Looking back, I seem to have had much more anxiety over the process of writing back then, probably because I hadn’t had nearly so much experience with my own process. Looking back, it really helps me to have records of what I did and how I felt about it.
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August, 2003
Squeezed out 500 words last night like toothpaste from a tube–a hundred words or so in chapter seven describing the bathroom (oh, the excitement!) a scene in chapter six that only accomplished one minor purpose, and then, with great effort, 41 more words earlier in six to set up something I added later on, that I should have thought of before. Makes perfect sense, right? And then decided the big hunk of text I’d put in at the end of chapter six probably has to go.
Sisyphus. That’s me right now.
I dreamt I was at workshop with the first five chapers–how bad is that? That’s more than a month from now. G. told me to read it, and I stood up and tried to do so (we don’t read our submissions aloud, never have!). My hands were shaky, which has never happened when I’ve given a reading, and all the pages were messed up, turned upside down, out of order, etc.. I think the dream changed after that, or maybe that was right before I woke up and declared myself a pathetic creature.
I woke up too early to get up, and my thoughts circled round and round on the middle section. Finally, inspiration, of a sort. I have to address the problem of parents…Alas, I must now think out the backstory for their parents in considerably more detail.
So long as I don’t let myself get frustrated because I’m not writing as fast, this should be fun. I like imagining scenes, and now I have a topic for them and my backbrain can chew away on thematic import as well.
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