November 01, 2001
It was a good night.
It was a good night. Did about another thousand words, and wrapped up the prelude with the aforementioned Maura. And our heroine made her first appearance:
The scent of lilacs drifted through the flimsy lace curtains that framed the dirty window of the tiny bedroom. There was only one window in the bedroom, just as there was only one window in the living room/dining room area, a large doorwall that opened onto a postage stamp of a balcony, a balcony reserved during this time of year for bike parking and Christmas tree storage. The apartment was tiny and crowded, with its sole human occupant currently snoring inelegantly in the narrow bed in the bedroom. The scent of lilacs did not wake the girl, nor did the quietly persistent burring of an alarm clock that began moments later.
The girl, A.J. to her friends and professors, was nothing more than a glimpse of wild mouse-brown hair beneath the pile of quilts as the alarm began to burr more insistently, growing more strident with each moment. Finally a fat orange tabby leapt onto the bed and started pacing at her mistress's head, yowling in hideous dissonance with the alarm. A round arm, complete with freckled hand, appeared from under the covers to swat at both alarm and cat. "Up," a voice murmured beneath the blankets. "M'up already." The tabby seemed to accept this as a coherent response, and strutted from the room, tail high in the air.
I woke up this morning,
I woke up this morning, and I faced a real struggle. I desperately wanted to call in sick to work and stay home and write. Well okay. Sleep a little more, then write. I did not, however. I'm proud of that. The idea here is to write the 50,000 words while I'm following my usual routine. The idea is to prove to myself that I can write that much in my normal schedule.
I'm still a little staggered at my pace last night. I don't think I've ever written that fast before. And the simple difference between last night and every other time I've sat down to write was this: I didn't care if it sucked. That's it. No agonizing fifteen minute pauses while I tried to figure out what word to use, what phrase to use next. No agonizing fifteen minute pauses getting stretched to two hour breaks while I got distracted and went off surfing the web rather than writing. I just wrote. Nonstop. That's what I need to learn to do. That's what this whole project is for.
This is going to be an interesting month.
I'll be periodically posting bits
I'll be periodically posting bits of what I've written for the day. For now, the opening sentence, such as it is:
On the morning of Maura Kilpatrick's wedding to Joseph Flaherty, the last thing anyone expected was for the bride to return to her mother's house at dawn with twigs and leaves in her hair and terrified exhaustion written all over her face.
