I really tried to be productive last night, getting my exercise and work done before watching John Oliver. But I hadn't written a single word the whole day, and decided to force myself to sit down and record all of what remained of "Last Friday In December," the D&B story I've been dragging my feet on for a month now.
I had been looking forward to the end of that story, because it included the bit that I was most proud of writing last year, and I couldn't wait to get to it.
Unfortunately, when I reached that part . . . it wasn't as good as I remembered it.
Also, there were only four thousand words left to record, and an hour of space on my recorder, and I didn't get even close to the end before it ran out. But I was dedicated, so I turned off the microphone, deleted two recordings (Bram Stoker and Algernon Blackwood), and went back to it. I was really bummed when I reached "the end," because it didn't have the impact I'd wanted it to*, and rewrote the last line. Twice.
I may not be as good a writer as I thought I was. Or I'm just overthinking this.
Sit-ups Today: 111
Push-ups Today: 211
I hadn't done a hike this month, so I made sure to get to it today, asking my nephews if they'd like to go with me to the waterfall up the canyon (and if they said no, I'd just do the regular hike on the mountain here in town). Two of the three said they would, including the four year old, which I found strange.
We drove up the canyon, and I missed the turn-off to where you get to the falls (guess it had been too long since I was there), and it was a pain to turn around and get back there. Even so, they have two parking lots just south of the falls, and people jam their cars in the spots, then just line them up wherever else they can fit them when those spots are filled.
We walked up the path, and my nephew (the four year old) started to complain about it being too far to walk, and wanting to be carried, but once we got to the falls, all his energy came back, and then some. The water level was lower than I've ever seen it before (down below, anyway, and the river it empties into), but the waterfall was still going strong. And it occurred to me: I have no idea where all this water is coming from. It's easy to say that it's melted snow, early in the spring and summer, but there's no more melted snow now. Is it coming from underground? If so, why would it emerge at the top of a mountain?
Anyway, we admired the falls--along with about a hundred other people--then went to the trail to reach the top of it. I remembered having no difficulty getting up there the last time, but man, it was super steep and treacherous, leading my ten year old nephew to declare that he wasn't going up any further. And leading me to think, "Wait, Mexican families bring their babies up here?"
Then I remembered that there was a long/easy trail and a short/difficult trail, both of them marked as such. So, we hiked back down, and started again, this time choosing the easy one.
And it was easy. The four year old had no difficulty with it, in fact, I had to tell him to slow down and stay with us, because it was too easy to imagine him walking right off a cliff without even noticing it.
We got to the top, and it was spectacular, as usual, and both nephews wanted to go INTO the water, rather than just look at it, as I've always done, so we did. We went across the fall and higher than I'd ever gone before, but I vaguely remembered it being harder to get down than to get up when you're hiking, so I declared it was time to turn around and head back.
That was a tiny bit more difficult, but not overly so. Who knew?
Push-ups Today: 211
Push-ups In August: 2940
Gosh, I need to end this story. I just sat down and wrote for two hours here in the library, and it's a scene that, if this were a screenplay, I'd cut out in the second draft. And it's the most I've written all month.**
Words Today: 1763
Words In August: 16,246
*This story leads into the novel-length "Only Have Eyes For You," so I was thinking it would be a good last story to include in the first "Dead & Breakfast" collection. But it might be better to swap its spot with "Meet the New Clerk," because it ends on a better note.
**One of my friends on Facebook has started reporting his daily writing achievements, and today, he had over eight thousand words. EIGHT THOUSAND. You're damned right I unfriended him.
No comments:
Post a Comment