Worst day times three

Yesterday, my dear friend, Mouse (Vera) passed away. I am still reeling from this news, even though it was certainly not unexpected. Mouse spent the last five years courageously battling ovarian cancer. Every possible treatment was tried, but even the ones that worked only did for a little while. Finally, there were no more treatments.

It was also the fourth anniversary of the death of another loved one. And, of course, the fifth annivesary of 9/11. I'm too exhausted to say much about that, except to point to New York Magazine's publishing of the beginning of the thread that occurred that awful morning on Echo, the bbs to which I belong. I logged on to read that morning, eventually, and now I revisit it every year, sometimes reading the whole thing, other times not making it through more than half a day's worth of posts. But here you can read the start.

A friend I spoke with yesterday thought maybe I should tear September 11th out of all my calendars from now on. It's a thought.

tired, so tired

I'm kinda wiped tonight, so I'm just going to write here a little bit, not work on my novel.

Something occurred to me earlier today about the story and that is that, so far, I have no freakin' clue how to get Gordon and Roberta back together. I mean, I think that's how it ends up, but I've been going along figuring that all will become clear as I write it all out. I'm a bit skeptical about that just at the moment. But that's probably because I'm not sure I can write at all well enough so that anyone would want to read what I've written.

Last night, I went to a reading by a friend/client, whose non-fiction book (The Perfect $100,000 House by Karrie Jacobs) is really wonderfully well-written. So I guess I'm still feeling completely and thoroughly intimidated by other people's talent. I hope I get over this soon.

More Bird by Bird

I spent some time today feeling like a complete failure. No, that's not quite right. I've spent some time this past week feeling like a complete failure. As a writer, that is. And a thinker, but being able to think is kind of a prerequisite for good writing, I think.

I'm reading all sorts of stuff that other people have written and are writing and I am thoroughly, completely intimidated and ashamed and frustrated and a lot of other feelings all wrapped up. Finally, the thought managed to enter my mind that, if I'm going to get any good at writing, I just have to keep doing it. And doing it. Over and over again.

So I just wrote for a few minutes on my novel. And I'm here. As for the novel, I think I may have written a phrase that won't get edited out at some point. I've also been editing old parts over the last couple or three weeks. I did at one point write some highly pornographic stuff that I knew would have to come out, in large part, so I did start to do some paring of that.

I also have to say that I'm having a horrible time with the chronology. I know what it is in my head, plus I've even written it down, but writing it in the book, that's far from there. Two of the three main characters have a history together (hence the sex) and there's a couple of marriages and some divorces and I haven't managed to write it so that it makes sense. But I keep telling myself that that's what the second draft is for.

I also really want to write some of the book in a second person's voice. And I know that's not how it's supposed to be done, but I hear her voice and it seems important to me to write it, but I don't want to lose the other character's voice, because he is the protagonist and he's who I started out writing about and I don't think I can show what happens to him without writing from his point of view, too. So this is all very experimental for me and we'll see what happens. I'm afraid that this is going to take some time.

I wish I could make a box like Steinbeck made for his editor. If I ever get an editor, she'll have to settle for lasagne or something.

Wanted: New Obsession

I was just reading a little bit of a friend's blog and thinking, Gee, she writes a helluva lot better than I do. And then I was thinking of how bored I am at the moment, how I'd like to be doing something more fun or at least something that I could get more obsessed about, other than Spider Solitaire.

Of course, that new obsession could be writing. Of which I have managed to do a little more since the last time I posted. But writing this is about as much as my poor, tired, little brain can handle at the moment. And I really don't like writing when I can't think. But maybe that's not the right attitude or the right idea. Maybe writing when I'm not thinking is fine for my first draft.

Anyway, really, what I want to do is go back to bed, curl up with a book and read until I fall asleep. I was in bed for a while (who the hell takes a nap at 9 o'clock at night?), but I made myself get up and come back to the computer, presumably to get some more work done. But, yeah, well, that didn't quite happen. Spider Solitaire, mah jongg solitaire, a mah jongg game that's very close to how my friends and I play (you may be able to d/l it here), quite a few visits to Echo (that link will take you to its website, but not Echo itself; for that, you need to telnet, at least for the moment).

So, no work tonight. It is time to go to bed, maybe to sleep in an hour or so. It feels like this post is worthless, it's about ... nothing. And maybe that's all right. In fact, it's going to have to be.