Good morning. I had a dream that, somehow, I had found myself back in college, and I was seeing tons of people that I knew and was friends with or had affection for (people from various points in my life, the way a dream can go). Excited, I sat on the front row at the first of my classes, while the teacher started passing out the books and assignments. And I realized, "Oh, I'm not going to be able to keep writing and blogging every day, because this is a serious amount of work. I guess today will be the last day."
And then I asked myself, "How did I enroll in all this? For what purpose? And how am I going to pay for it?" And a little voice inside my head told me the answer: because it's a dream.
And then I woke up.
I'm now editing Chapter 22 of "My Friend of Misery" (Chapter 25 is the end of part one), and just before I saved it, I saw a little space in the waveform where I had left five or six seconds of silence. Well, that's the sort of thing that will get your audiobook kicked back in your face (months after you submitted it, of course), so I decided to listen to the chapter.
For the first three minutes, it was fine (oh, I cut out a couple of mouth clicks, but there are literally hundreds of those in my recordings, so it's no surprise a few of those slip through), but even before I reached the silence, there was a repeated line. Then later, there was a screw-up, me berating myself about the screw-up, and the fixed line. And then . . . oh Lord Cthulhu, there was a whole section of unedited audio, with plenty of hiccups, and even a few hiccoughs.
I had missed that whole stretch, and had been erroneously about to save the file and move on to the next chapter. So I took a few minutes to finish the chapter this morning before I started my Sunday.
But it gave me pause. How many other chapters are like that, with mistakes and relines and sniffles and silence in them? And a bigger question: why do I even continue to try to do this kind of thing, when it takes so much time, and provides almost none of the satisfaction of actually writing my stories?
But either I have a passion for this stuff or I have a talent for it, so I have to continue. After all, I didn't make money on my writing for the first twenty years I was doing it.
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In November: 1672
I'd put my writing today in the top three hardest days since I started. Oh, I had a few (about forty) words written in the morning, so I could have gone the rest of the day without doing any more and still been able to count it, but it was only 44 words. I went my whole day, doing other things, away from home, unable to write (though I had taken my laptop with me in case I wanted to crack it open and get some writing done), and then when I got home, I made exercise my priority.
I did my sit-ups, my squats, and my run, and then I sat down and ate (much later than you're supposed to, if you don't want to be a fat guy in a little coat), and watched TV. And I started to feel my eyes getting heavy, and this sense of tiredness and "boy, this couch is super comfortable" came over me. And I had the choice: let myself go to sleep, or force myself to get up and go write something.
It took me four or five seconds to decide, and my body really wanted to take advantage of those seconds (you snooze, you lose, literally this time). But I got up, and did my best to write the Uncle Armin scene for my story. It was tough, and I don't even really remember what I wrote* in those moments before I went to sleep, but I could rest knowing I did the work, and could dream sweetly.
Words Today: 576
Words In November: 13,786
*Wouldn't it be hilarious if it was all paragraphs like "dsfakj eiru cmnxv spo poeriw odfifi sofio<Xc fajp fdjaalkf 33333333 d?"
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