What follows are senseless ramblings, even more so than normal. Enjoy.
It’s thicker than worms worming through the glacial journey of the last movement of the world. Moving fingers to say nothing. Coherent thoughts not coalescing. Where are the last of the tines that rise off the righteousness? I always return to that word righteousness when I’m spouting nonsense. I wonder what one has to do with the other.
I was delayed for a moment while I find the right word. I didn’t find it. I substituted nonsense for it. The action waits for no man, and I am the no man. The worm drills through my brain. It’s made its home. You think it would treat its home right, but it doesn’t. It continues to drill and push. Its actions exhaust me. I yawn and yawn and yawn until I beg for someone to throw a tennis ball into my mouth. They don’t. I’m alone and home and tired. Too tired even to sleep. I managed to sleep last night. I thought that would make me feel better for this morning. It wasn’t to be. I woke this morning worse than ever, my head holed with the worms and exhaustion threatening to drag me into its fathoms.
It’s getting close again to sleep time. Then the weekend. I have no plans and I’m afraid that the weekend will drag me down into itself, leave me flapping my legs and arms trying to swim on dry land and look for something or anything to occupy my lonesomeness.
Randy, my sister, gave birth to beautiful twins today. She’s a brave girl, my sister is—actual both of are. We come from a brave family. Don’t ask what happened to me.
Still words flow through empty caverns. They’re searching in the nooks looking for a secure step to stand on. They want to go higher, say more. But they have to settle for what they do. And they’re not doing much today except nonsense. I need rest. Exhaustion has overtaken me. Try as I might, there is nothing left. No thoughts will make up for that. My fingers ache at the losses.
The weather changed and changed. It grew warmer and then cooler and then warmer again. The worms in my head don’t like the changing weather. It triggers the pain. I still pound away, today less organized and thoughtful than yesterday, which was barely organized and thoughtful. But it’s the word count that matters. Storying would be nice, but nice doesn’t make the ache go away.
The last twenty minutes have been better than most. I ate two Advil today. I’m not proud. I usually try to wait until the pain is unbearable to eat them. The pain was unbearable this morning. It was again this evening. Two Advil in one day is not good. I try to limit myself to a three or so a month. I used to get nasty rebound headaches, the type that left me upside down on the floor trying to relieve the pressure by forcing even more blood into my head. It sometimes worked, you should try it. What I found was that taking Advil continuously, while relieving the pain somewhat initially, would bring back the pain tenfold when taken often. It’s like the pain gets angry at me for trying to snuff it out, and returns with a vengeance to dance upon the burning embers of my brain. It’s the worms talking. I know it. I just can’t figure out what it is they’re saying.
I’m struggling with these words. It’s a bit after nine in the evening, and I want to start preparing for bed. But first I need to finish this. Man, I wish I was saying something useful today. I’m not even sure what useful words look like anymore. They’re probably really big and strung together in such ways that they don’t droop in the middle. Droopy middles don’t agree with me.
Tomorrow’s another day. And then the day after it is yet another day. It’s funny how days work like that. I played hooky from work today. Well, it wasn’t hooky since I genuinely was sick and exhausted and worm filled. So I guess it was just a sick day. I’ll be back to work tomorrow, don’t worry. I just need two nights in a row of good sleep. I got that yesterday, by the way. The first day, that is. I slept the entire night from when I put down the keyboard. Aren’t you proud of me? I had my doubts too. It felt great to sleep and terrible to wake up. Well, more terrible than usual.
This is all filler. There will come a time when I won’t be able to write filler anymore; where this will all seem ridiculous and puerile and a terrible waste of time. Then I’ll either write something worthwhile or give up. My track record doesn’t bode well, I’ll warn you. I tend to give up at times like that after a last fiery burst of inspiration. I think it’s the final inspiration that pushes me over the edge. I mean, I’ve done it then, you know. I’ve created something worthwhile. What more is there after that? It’s the process that’s important. This is painful, this typing without actually saying something excuse for fun.
So much consternation. It feels good to consternate again. I think my writing has suffered from lack of consternations. Where would I be without consternations? Oh, yeah. Now I remember. I would be actually writing something that people may want to read. I always forget that part. I’ll end this as I began, with sense-free words.
Bursting organs and twirling chairs while I keep my eyes off the road and type away. The chimney pokes out of the roof and birds take a likening to its poking. It’s hard to conjugate poke, in case you’ve never tried. There aren’t many options.
I’m not looking forward to scrolling up and trying to put this into some sense of order. Maybe I’ll correct the misspelled words and call it a night. This musing definitely needs a warning to throw off the sense of pathetic talentless hack. Sleep beckons. After tonight, I should be back on the schedule, ready to conquer the world again. I wonder if the world still needs conquering. I’m always afraid that I’ll go to sleep one day, and when I wake up, the world will be perfect and no longer in need of my particular skills.
Last night was another bad sleep. I had hoped that I was passed the jetlag, that I had already licked it. But when I woke at 1:40 in the morning, wide awake, I checked my tongue in the mirror, and there was no sign of cherry red goodness. I don’t know what it is about that time of the morning, but my body seems stuck to it. I hope I didn’t accidentally trip an alarm setting in my brain. I’m a good programmer, but I have no idea how to manage the data structures in my gray area. I did manage to take a nap on the van ride home. My stomach was feeling a bit off, and the nap got me through the ride and relieved some of the sleep pressures (perhaps even going as far as relieving some hypothetical debt). I didn’t drink any caffeine except hot tea this morning. I am as ready as I ever will be for a full night’s sleep tonight. Two people have told me that Tylenol PM is the way to go. If things go wrong tonight, a PM’ing I will have to go tomorrow.
I’ve been working on the wedding website again. That link still points to the old version, which lacks the wedding details. The redesign feels simpler and cleaner. I hope to roll it out this weekend. Since this is my first Julie-free weekend, I should have plenty of time. Unless I break down and buy a video game. I don’t feel the urge to do that yet, but I know it’s always there, at the edges of my consciousness, glowing with a pleasant light and soft soothing beeps, like one hears at casinos, encouraging you to put just one more coin into the slot machine. The urge waits patiently for me to reach and grab it and swing. Once I get the desire in my head, there’s no turning back. I’ll stop talking about it before these words trigger the very desire I’m trying to keep at bay. Tasty bays.
I don’t have much more to talk about. These non-caffeinated writings are not my strong suit. I’ll manage, don’t you worry. Perhaps it’s time for story? I tried. I really did. I squeezed words onto the page but my brain refused to cooperate. I’m exhausted. Did I mention that yet? Tonight will be an earlier night to bed. I can barely keep my eyelids open now. Don’t you worry: I won’t return to my eyelid and true-belief rambling. I’m much too cultured for such uncouth words.
If I can’t write it, I might as well write about where I am heading with the Unnamed Photograph Draft. Before I wrote that part, I thought I had a good idea. The story was going to be about a married couple who travelled to Taiwan at the wife’s insistence to take wedding photos. The couple had been married for a while but they never had an actual wedding ceremony. The wife read about how Taiwan was trying to encourage its tourism through these wedding photo places. The wife looks at the visit as an opportunity to fix the mistakes they made in the past, and create new memories for their future.
There are other less pleasant reasons for the trip as well. Their marriage is not doing well. I was thinking infidelity, but it could be more of a trust issue, or perhaps they’re just growing apart. The couple is looking at this experience as a way to either work through their problems. Yeah, I know. I don’t have enough planned. Who are these characters? What drives them? Do they want the marriage to work? What makes them interesting? What about motivations?
When I write a short story, I usually try to find something interesting to focus on related to the writing itself. This time I had decided to focus on obstacles. I tend to baby my characters too much. I don’t challenge them, and I have a feeling that is why I run out of things to write. Without obstacles or challenges or goals, the characters do nothing. They sit on their lazy butts—just like me!— and wait for something to happen. When nothing happens, they look to me with their large watery puppy eyes, and beg me to say something. I end up spending a paragraph describing something uninteresting, only to record an inane conversation or action-less scene, accepting that puking through words is as good a way as any to make goal. I wanted to use this story attempt as a way to improve how I torture my characters. (And torturing the characters is not the same as consternating with the characters. Consternation tortures the reader.) I want my characters to be given the opportunity to grow. And the only way you grow is through life’s decisions.
With that in mind, I wrote that first segment of the story. An old southern man narrator appeared and I decided to run with it. I knew full well that my chances of finding his voice after the first marathon session were very slim. As is my usual way, I began the story with a few paragraphs of complaints. I cut the complaints while pre-editing it. (Yes, I know I shouldn’t be editing, but I was searching I wanted to finish something with decent writing. I’m sick of Marathon-level writing. Ah, that’s my evil inner editor speaking.) I made the cuts after deciding that the narrator should be likeable, and therefore unlike David. The narrator should not spend eight paragraphs complaining, only to sit around while nothing happens to him and he does nothing (sound familiar?). I wanted him to be happy. Everyone likes a happy person. I like happy people (which explains my love for the Julies—she’s a very happy person, usually. . .).
I’m finding it difficult to keep my eyes open. This bodes well for my sleep. Assuming the sleepiness is not one of those fake sleepiness where I wake up in a few hours feeling awake but not rested.
But with the nice old narrator and his bookish wife, I began to have worries. What possible conflicts and challenges could I throw their way? I thought about the obvious one: rain during the photo session. The photograph told us (through Julie’s translation) that the bride the previously day had cried hysterically because the torrential rain had ruined her photo shoot. That looked like conflict to me. Then there was the relationship itself. The narrator seemed very fond of his wife. I wonder if that’s an act or if he deludes himself. I find it hard to believe that an old person would bother, but there are many superficial old people out there.
I’m chock full of ideas. Oh, wait, I mean I’m chock out of ideas. I wonder if you can be chock out of something. I need to get back to actually writing the story instead of writing about writing the story.
It’s raining outside. We were expecting a snow shower that would gradually turn to rain as it warmed. It’s good that there’s interesting weather going on here or I would have trouble making goal. The sound of the rain hitting the roof has a slight tinkling to it, as if some of it is hail. If it gets colder instead of warmer tonight, then tomorrow may be the snow day I’ve been craving. (Yesterday should have been the snow day, but I was too dedicated. I’ll happily trade a full night’s sleep for a snow day tomorrow. I’m not sure if it works that way, though.
I’m getting close. When I first wrote those words, I looked down in dismay at three paragraphs of story crude. I thought about going down and reworking those words. But after playing with words for a bit, I realized my mind wasn’t there enough to move it forward. If I wrote story, I would end up pushing words to meet goal instead of words to tell story. I’m so easily manipulated.
Word count: 1,335
And here’s the real test. I don’t want to write today. I’m tired and it’s cold and there’s snow and ice outside and I haven’t had my coffee and Julie woke me up late last night and I was angry at her and then I wasn’t but I still have the taste of anger in my mouth and the last thing I want to do is put these words down. Have you ever noticed that anger tastes a bit like lamb fat?
I knew going in that the real test of my new goal would be on days like this. Would I meet goal? Would I consternate endlessly to sneak around the goal’s backside? Would that even count? Or would I story? I pounded almost two sentences of story before my eyelids started sliding. I commanded them to stay open but they weren’t listening. I have a pesky suspicion that they never listen, at least not really. They close of their own volition constantly. I just poked a finger into my eye and guess what: my eyelids closed even after I told them not to.
I’m still jetlagged with a balance of sleep debt hanging on top of my head. I’m not sure I’m even a believer in sleep debt. Or maybe I’m a believer but not a true believer. There’s a big difference between the two. Believers believe something is true, where true believers know something is true a priori, that is, the true believer believes the truth before and not withstanding any investigation or experience. Yeah, I made that up too.
The problem I see with sleep debt is that even when I’m very tired and sleep extra sleep to try to work it off (assuming, for the moment, that it exists), there is a good chance that the extra sleep will reset my sleep schedule and cause me to wake up pathologically yawning. That is bad as with pathological yawns comes blazing headaches, and with the headaches arrive nausea and a desperate need to work off the sleep debt.
I do wonder whether you really need to work of sleep debt like you would credit card debt, or whether it dissipates over time. I spent some time trying to think of an analogy for the dissipation and I didn’t find any. Maybe there are some dissipating credit card debts, but I’ve yet to find them. That would be cool: a credit card where the debt disappears over a long enough period of time. I guess that’s how minimum payments work. Regrettably, it would take fifty years to work off any significant balance that way.
My thoughts are very random and unorganized and very unintelligible and very padded today. My eyes are glued to the word count at the bottom of the page. I know they shouldn’t be, but it feels like one of those chore days during the Marathon. Yes, I know, get on with it. Get back to the old man and his wife and their wedding photographs. That’s what my story is about in case you haven’t figured it out yet.
I switched off the wi-fi on my computer. I was very close to browsing through inane videos and even inaner message boards. I’m an information addict, and not in the good way. I crave the refresh more than the information, the fanboy more than the reasoned debate, the boring more than the engaging or challenging. In short, I’m a typical American in search of ways to strangle time on the mat while the referee slaps out the three-count.
Ah, I’m almost there today. These consternations really shouldn’t reckon toward the word count. There’s much in the world that really shouldn’t happen but does. This is just another one of those things.
Speaking of weather, if you’ve been catching the news, the State of Washington has been buried under snow and ice over the last two days. It hailed and snowed during rush hour yesterday, beginning almost exactly when we started walking to the van. There were plenty of accidents on the roads and the commute was long but exciting. Our eyes were glued to the traffic thingy, and I watched with some of the information addiction as they updated the maps and accident reports. I refreshed the information often and it was very satisfying.
Today promised to be dry and cold. I woke up hopeful that school—err, work—would be cancelled because of yesterday’s weather. I checked my mail and there were no messages. I was disappointed. I would have liked to sleep in to work off some of that sleep debt. Who am I kidding—I’m not a true believer, there is no such thing as sleep debt. So I drove to the vanpool, and most of the riders were still planning on driving into work. I had my moment of choice. I knew my choice had consequences, since all choices have consequences. And I also knew that those choices and consequences were the very meaning of why I was put on this earth. I won’t try to sugarcoat it for you. Every time you make even the most unimportant decision, you’re designing and deciding your character. You are the decisions you make, just like chickens are the bugs that they eat.
Halfway to work, we received the mail message informing us that while the campus was open, the facilities would not be open. That meant no cafeteria. Getting back to the choices, one of the reasons I decided to go to work was because of the hot lunch. When I stay home I sometimes forget to eat. Maybe it’s not so much that I forget to eat and more that I’m too lazy to get something to eat. Not surprisingly after a week away my cupboards are bear. That’s a funny word: cupboards. I imagine there was a time when it was very novel to have boards hammered onto the wall that held the cups. Cups were probably the first dishware. You don’t need plates (think oversized turkey legs held in grubby greasy hands) and you don’t need silverware (think pocket dagger for the hard to chew beef slabs). But you need cups if you want to drink. I guess you could drink out of a bucket or a trough, but those are hard to move around. If you want portable drinking, you need cups. Everything else is optional. And with cups there’s a need for boards to hold them. I should have been a etymologist but only if they let me make stuff up instead of base my findings on research. These are ridiculous sentences. Sometimes I need to write ridiculous sentences to say nothing. This is a lot of nothing.
At this point I would normally sing a short song. The song doesn’t have lyrics, but is more of a sweet tune, which, I am sorry to report, is difficult to convey using the written word. It’s short and catchy but not very memorable—you’d probably forget it after the first time you heard it. And if you heard me sing it, you probably wouldn’t even catch the real tune. I’m not very good at finding notes myself. I need something to cue me, like the Julies or my trumpet. Instruments are good that way: when tuned properly, they make it easy to find the sweet spot of the note, which is the right pitch for that note. Not that I ever was capable of finding that sweet spot, but it is possible.
So I’m in the van and we’re halfway to work and I realize there’s no turning back. I’m stuck going to work. The roads are empty and mostly without ice. The campus roads are a bit icy and dangerous and very empty. The offices are no better, at least with respect to the emptiness. I didn’t find much ice inside, and it was no dangerous than the normal backstabbing and politicizing and the dodging of falling computers. When the mail went out about the service closures, most people chose to work from home. Those are some smart people. The day was sunny and cold. I did manage to eat something at lunch. I had to bum a ride from a coworker to go somewhere that wasn’t closed, but it was better than starving.
There you go. That’s the goal. Sorry for the absurd musing. I had hopes of better things but hopes like wishes don’t always fly. I’m such a loser.
I’ve delayed this enough. Okay, I’ll delay it a bit more. I’m tired. Very tired. I thought I was being good last night. At Julie’s urgings I stayed up to 10:30pm, my normal bedtime. I was out to the world moments after hitting the sheets. And then I woke at one forty in the morning. It was one of those awakenings where you know there’s no chance of getting back to bed but you’re too tired to do anything, like grabbing the computer and pounding on story. So I took the lazy man’s way out and trekked to the living room, popped the first DVD of HBO’s “The Wire” into the box, and proceeded through half of the first season, stopping only when my third-floor alarm clock started beeping to tell me it was time to shower.
The day wasn’t as terrible as I expected. I was tired, but a morning coffee got most of my work done, and an invigorating, snow-filled van ride home covered my evening. I seared a tuna steak and I’m now cuddling on this lonely snowy night in my favorite chair, with my green blanket and laptop to keep me warm in lieu of the Julies.
I still feel exhaustion clawing at my britches, and I expect that I won’t have the willpower to stay up to 10:30pm again. That’s okay. I always have more of “The Wire” waiting downstairs for me. I’m not even sure if it’s good. It is there, however. And in the middle of the night, when the rest of the world—at least the physical world around you—is sleeping, it’s a way to pass the time. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be passing the time. I should be embracing the time. But there are only so many hugs I can give on cold nights.
And yes, I used this musing to push my word count so I wouldn’t have to work anymore on my story. I’m a terrible man. But the story is moving along somewhat. I have a voice, of kind, and if I don’t exactly have a plot yet, I do have vague ideas, which, if you think about it, is like a plan only, well, vaguer. Okay. I’ll stop now. Not because I have to but because I want to and because that want is to scroll up and see if I can add more words.
I added a few more words, and to keep with my goal, I’ll post the first short part under lock. That way I won’t feel the need to rework it and edit it and man I am exhausted. I can’t keep me eyes open anymore. It’s 9pm, and this may be the best I can do for tonight. Hopefully this won’t be another 2am night.
Word count: 1,220
Okay, that didn’t work. I had every intention of starting my new story based on my wedding photography experience. But as soon as I started (okay, after I wrote three sentences and then browsed the web for a bit), Julie informed me that it was time to go to dinner with her family. Her big uncle (Taiwanese, and I think most Asian people, call their aunts and uncles by their birth order: big, small, and middle) had stopped by the previous day to invite us to dinner. We were meeting at a “traditional” place near where Julie’s uncles live. Julie’s parents used the word “traditional” a number of times when describing the establishment, which I translated with Julie’s help as hole in the wall.
Our translation wasn’t too far off. When we arrived, we found an outdoor kitchen stacked with meats and dead fishes at the entrance, and a few ratty tables behind the open kitchen. Only one of the tables was occupied with customers. The host (or was he the cook?) pointed us toward a backdoor that led to a staircase to the second floor. The conditions on the second floor were not much better. But the place seemed to have the necessary accruements: three big round tables, Julie’s family, and an old-school coin-fed karaoke machine, complete with 1980s backdrop photograph hanging above the stage. Julie’s uncles had reserved the whole floor for our get together.
Stacked on the tables were food dishes and many bottles of Taiwanese beer, most in a half-empty state. The beer is going to play an important role in this story, so I should describe it. The bottles themselves were much larger than what we in America think of beer bottles. They were probably a liter or so, although I didn’t think to look at label—ignoring, for the moment, that the volume was probably written in Chinese characters. There was a green glass version and a brown glass version. Since they gave me only the green version to drink, I can’t say what the difference was. I imagine one was a light beer and the other a darker beer, but, again, that’s only supposition. I learned later from big uncle that this Taiwanese beer (I didn’t catch the name either) came from a region of Taiwan that was once a German colony. Seeing as Germany is the home of the best beer in the world, big uncle assured me, this was very good beer. From what I remember, big uncle was right, the beer was good. At least I think it was. It is difficult for me to remember a lot of what happened that night. I have doubts about whether the memories I do have are my own, or details I made-up or created through Julie’s telling to fill in the gaps. But more on that later.
The large tables were like most large tables you have probably seen in Chinese restaurants in the states: an inner circular platform on the table spun on tracks to allow the family-style dishes to rotate around to the different chairs. When we arrived, the uncles made room at the first table (the one closer to the Karaoke stage) by supplanting Julie’s cousins. This allowed us to sit with Julie’s little aunt (an elementary school principal) and her husband, her middle aunt (Julie’s mother, I guess, would be big aunt, as she’s the oldest of the family), her big uncle, and her grandmother, the matriarch of the family. Julie was the first granddaughter on this side of the family. She uses this to explain why she was so spoiled while growing up in Taiwan. She’s no longer spoiled thanks to the ruthless children in America, and, and this story I find particularly insightful into Julie’s character, a perm haircut her mother forced on her at a young age to look more American, we presumed. The middle uncle sat at the second table with his wife and their four supplanted children, the second of which dragged her husband along for the festivities.
The simple dishes of food arrived through the early part of the night until the table was covered in plates. I ate lightly, sticking with vegetables and mayonnaise-covered albacore. Julie’s uncles sent the youngest cousin (and the only male cousin, the other three being, like Julie and her siblings, all females) out for vegetable dumplings for Julie’s dad, who, after reading a book on nutrition probably by a smarmy pseudo-doctor, had foresworn fish and meat and eggs and simple carbohydrates and frying oils, for the tasteless world of vegan delights. Big uncle is a vegetarian as well. He was the first in the family to move to the states, and his English is very strong, stronger even than Julie’s parents.
Because of my experimentation with keeping kosher (at least my version of it, what I dubbed ‘Kosher Style’) I ate only fish, vegetable, and rice during time in Taiwan. This was by far the hardest trial in my kosher experimentation. There are lots of yummy dishes with duck and beef and chicken and pork in Taiwan, and to limit myself to only fishes (of which I only have a mild fondness, except when deep fried, since, as we all know, even deep-fried shoe is tasty. But, regrettably, deep fried food has a tendency to cause my stomach to summersault and back flip and do all sorts of nasty dances at the strangest of times) and vegetables seemed criminal.
I made only one exception to the Kosher Style for Julie’s grandmother’s drunken chicken. I promised Julie I’d make this concession before we left so as not to insult her grandmother as it’s one of her specialties. I kept my word, and even though it contained non-kosher chicken, I ate it for dinner one night. What amazed me most was the simplicity of the recipe. All the times I ate the chicken in Dallas when she cooked it (this was pre-Kosher Style David), I assumed she had slaved for hours preparing the meal. For those who have not eaten drunken chicken, you are missing out. It’s chicken cooked in an alcoholic broth. Here’s the entire recipe as told by Julie’s grandmother: chop up chicken legs with a large cleaver; fry the chicken pieces in sesame oil with sliced ginger until browned; transfer the chicken and ginger to a stockpot; add equal parts rice wine and water; cook until done (she wasn’t more exact about the doneness and ignoring Julie’s repeated requests—since she only speaks Taiwanese, I wasn’t in a position to ask her directly—for more details about the signs of doneness. The soup contained no vegetables, and is all about alcohol and grease and chicken. It was the wonderful exception to Kosher Style that convinced me that for all my posing, I could never be a vegetarian. Over the course of this week, my stomach has shrunk to a small ball. I can’t even look at Chinese food or fish without growing a bit queasy. For me, at least, it’s true that the food you grow up eating has a huge influence on the food you crave. Maybe if I stayed in Taiwan for long enough, I could get used to their dishes.
Since big uncle turned vegetarian, he missed the mixed wasabi and soy sauce that sushi and sashimi are paired. He told us that he now dunks the strings of white radishes into the dipping wasabi sauce. I’m not sure why I brought that up. I guess there are some details that add nothing to the story and yet seem so important when you first hear them that I feel I have no choice but to record them. And then when I get around to writing them, I find there’s really no place in the story for it but I refuse to cut it (and only partly because it would push off reaching the 3,000 goal). Or maybe, and here we’re dipping into David’s deep psychological waters, maybe it’s just that I really like to type radishes in wasabi.
The place settings at the tables suited the traditional aspect of the restaurant: fitted inside a beige plastic bowl was a small glass cup—smaller than your average water glass in a restaurant—stacked upside down. I immediately wondered how much beer one could drink from such a small cup. I had always heard that Asians enjoyed binging on alcohol. But judging by the size of the cup, significant doubts crept into my mind. Perhaps my Asian friends were not so keen on drinking. Perhaps their boasts of drinking were as empty as their food made me fell an hour after eating it. Now, I will admit, I was never one of those people that judged a person’s worth by how much alcohol they imbibed. (At least not really: I often belittled people for their lack of drinking skills, but that was social pressure. If you’re not in the belittling group then you’re in the belittled group, and we all know which group gets all the girls.) But looking at the tiny glasses, I wondered if maybe there were times when size did matter.
It wasn’t long before the uncles sent a bottle of beer across the table to me. Except for Julie’s grandmother, all the women at the first table chose to drink tea instead of beer. This provides additional evidence in support of the hypothesis that women truly are the smarter of the sexes. It was only when I popped open the beer bottle that I realized the true ingenuity provided by the small cup. You see, drinking beer in Taiwan is not about sipping. It’s about downing shots of beer. You fill the cup, and then you drink it in a gulp. After a few rounds I realized that this was a very civilized way to drink beer. Similar to how chopsticks are civilized because diners aren’t expected to saw through their meat before forking it into their maws.
With the small cup, there was no hiding behind the colored beer bottles. I did that in school: I hid my slow drinking behind colored beer bottles. I was never a strong drinker in college, and in order to avoid ridicule by my friends (some of which are reading this—well, are probably reading this, if they’ve make it this far into this overly long musing), I would upend the beer bottle, and keep my tongue partly lodged in the mouth of the bottle, which allowed only a trickle of beer to make its way into my mouth. This left me with plenty of time to position the beer at the back of my throat for a proper swallow. As I said, I was not a strong drinker, and the sad fact was it wasn’t that I couldn’t handle my alcohol; it was that I really couldn’t drink it. My throat refused to swallow more than a few sips.
It wasn’t until sometime after graduate school that I found that drinking alcohol wasn’t as hard as I made it out to be. It was all about relaxing the throat and swallowing the alcohol without twirling it around in your mouth. Alcohol does not have a particular good taste on the tongue and nose, and the faster you get it out of your mouth and into your belly where it can perform its magic, the better. Relaxation was the key.
Besides the small cups, there was another devious custom in wait for me. As in America, there is plenty of toasting. But unlike in America, where at the end of the toast, people are expected to graciously sip at their wine glasses, in Taiwan people are expected to down a shot. I was already into my second bottle when I realized that anytime I caught the eye of any person, they would immediately raise their cup for a toast. I was three bottles into the wind before I realized that they were out to get me drunk. It was a conspiracy, I tell you. At one point, Julie’s female cousins lined up in front of me, and each toasted me separately. That’s three drinks for me and one for each of them.
There were some people who were not involved in the conspiracy. Julie’s mom was one of those people. As I began my quest to drink too much beer, she kept pointing me to the food, telling me I shouldn’t drink beer on an empty stomach, I would get sick. It turns out she was right as mothers usually are. But at the time, I politely nodded and continued to toast and chug full glasses of beer. That was another secret Julie’s mom shared with me the next morning, as I struggled to keep my stomach in check while in a disgustingly terrible hung-over state: you don’t have to fill your entire glass to toast. You can fill it halfway or with less alcohol, or, and this she repeated many times during breakfast, you can toast with hot or cold tea, the temperature really didn’t matter, she assured me.
What Julie’s mom did not understand, however, was that getting drunk was fun. There was much singing and dancing (see photos for evidence), and while, as I grew drunker and drunker, I was less likely to find the proper key in the karaoke singing, nobody seemed to mind. Big uncle in particular was a fan of my excellent drinking skills. He told me that his father, Julie’s grandfather, was a very skilled drinker as well. He could substitute beer for food when needed. One time, big uncle was called by Julie’s grandfather to pick him up at a restaurant. When he arrived, he counted 48 empty bottles of beer on a table with only two people. That is an insane amount of alcohol. I can’t imagine how long it would take to empty 24 bottles of beer (and I’m really thinking of emptying one’s bladder after the drinking). It truly boggles my mind.
I consider myself a relative good drunk. I tend to get very happy and social once I cross over the drunken line. I managed to toast everyone with their Chinese names, and even convinced the cousin’s husband to punch a song into the karaoke machine. Everyone sang except for Julie’s grandmother. Not even a Japanese song could convince her to get up on the stage. The earlier parts of the night I remember better. I definitely drank too much and sang too much and danced too much, but everyone agreed (well, maybe with the exception of Julie’s parents) that I was a fun drunk—as in, a drunk we can all point and laugh at. Yeah, that about sums up my night.
As with most good things, there’s usually a price to pay when it’s done. The tab for the night was very high. I’ll provide one example: Julie found me in the bathroom with my head literally in the toilet puking. That example is rather tame compared to a few others that I remembered only vaguely, but which Julie filled in the details the next morning. I’ve heard it said that you can judge a wife by how she treats her husband when he’s drunk. If there’s any truth to that, then Julie will be an excellent wife. I do believe that the uncles’ karaoke night was the most drunk I’ve ever been. But I also believe that I’ve been close to this drunk before. Just don’t tell Julie’s mom.
(Disclaimer: no, I don’t get drunk often. Stop worrying, mom. And, yeah, I did have more juicy details to add to the price part—but I’m tired now, and I wasted most of my energies on the earlier part. I guess you’ll have to let your imagination run wild on the other parts.)
As I penned these words on my flight back to Seattle from Taipei, I was constantly interrupted by “serious turbulence,” a term I guffawed at when the flight attendant first went on the horn to instruct us to tighten our belts. I now freely admit and accept that “serious turbulence” is a very complete and accurate description of large swaths of the flight back. The captain had warned us at the beginning of the flight that we would run into turbulence over most of the flight. I have been on many flights where captains gave similar such warning, only to hit a few bumps here or there. On those flights, I would look around at the shocked faces of my fellow passengers, secretly secure that the rational parts of my brain knew that the rough air—since that is all that turbulence is, dips and currents in the air, similar to potholes in the road—will not damage the plane. For the most part, my rational brain wins out over the more primitive parts of my brain.
What the turbulence will do, however, and is doing now in a most egregious way, was aggravate a sensitive stomach. Yes, my dear friends, after yesterday’s fiascos, and even counting today’s hang-over remedies and partial recovery, my stomach was still delicate. I’ve found that these particular bumps in the road are not a good balm for my ailing stomach. Reclining the seat all the way and taking short naps did help keep the demons from bursting forth during the more aptly-named stomach dropping moments of the flight. This flight has been one of the worst I’ve ever experienced in my extensive flying time, falling out somewhere between high flying rollercoaster and awkward bumper car memory, of which I’m sure you remember: you’ve waited an hour in the blistering sun downing hotdog after hotdog and washing each dog down with sugary colas, only to find yourself hot and bothered and behind the wheel of a bumper car, the smell of rubber heavy in the air, the repetitive carnival music drowning out the sounds of screaming children, and after the electric cars unfreeze, and you ram the rubber end of your car into the first thing that moves, you realize that the dogs swimming in colas in your stomach have declared war, and while you’re not sure who the enemy is, you are sure that if one more person bumps into you, the partially liquefied dogs will ride the brown sugary water up and through the esophagus to erupt and give new meaning to the bumper in the cars. It was times like that you focused all your efforts on driving true and straight and avoiding pile ups. The day’s turbulence was no different. It passed again, and I managed to keep my stomach for now.
And for those keeping score, while on the uncles’ karaoke night, I promised and failed to deliver on the 500 words to reach my goal (no matter how much I want to, we’re still too close to the Marathon to capitalize ‘goal’), I made up for it on the flight home, pounding out my 4,000+ words. This should cover me for the drunken day and today. I haven’t been able to do the math yet, but since I left on Sunday at 11pm Taipei time, and return on Sunday at 6pm Seattle time, I can also write another 1,000 words on the second Sunday night. I’m not sure if it will be necessary, however. I figure the goal is something I aspire to (as opposed to during the Marathon where it is something that cannot be missed), and my aspiration begins at ends not at the daily count, but at the more accurate weekly count.
Regrettably, my batteries died after I wrote the first few paragraphs of my next story. I’ll save those paragraphs for tomorrow’s entry. These last two weigh enough to keep me in check. And besides, it’s past time for me to get to sleep. Staying up for one and a half days instead of the normal one day has made my brain a bit weirder than usual.
Some shots we took during our visit. This includes the infamous (as soon as I get around to posting it) karaoke night.
Today is my last full day in Taiwan. I leave tomorrow on a late-night flight for Seattle. Julie is staying for another two and a half weeks to finish shooting videos for The Dr. Julie Show. I will miss her terribly as usual. Since she moved to Seattle, our time apart has noticeably decreased. She’s still escaped me a few times, but overall I can expect to find her at home (or on her way home) most evenings. As I’ve said before and I’ll say again and again, having Julie in Seattle is wonderful.
For me a full week is about as long as I can stay away from home. I’m a creature of habit, and at the end, as pathetic as it may sound, I enjoy sameness. A regular schedule helps me ward off my frequent headaches and keeps me leveled. While the P.H.D.’s (Post-Headache Days, for the uninitiated or forgetful) are wonderful, I’d gladly trade them in for headache-free days any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Yeah, I never got that saying either.
The weather has been amazing in Taiwan. That shouldn’t be so important to report. It seems most small talk always begins and ends with a discussion of the weather: too hot, too cold, rainy for longer than expected, sunshine in the rainy season, expect the world to end at any time and cats to befriend dogs and sheep and wolves to bed down together. It’s all inane—the weather, that is, and my writing, of course—and yet here I am, reporting on the weather patterns.
The weather has been in the 60s and 70s, and sunny most of the week. A torrential rainstorm did catch up to us on the day before our wedding photo shoot. Julie was very nervous about the next day’s weather as all the weather predictions pointed to the rain continuing and it turning cold. It did no such thing. I caught a glimpse of the pregnant gray clouds after waking in the morning. The clouds covered half the sky, and I wasn’t sure whether they were coming and leaving. As you can see by our photographs, the clouds were leaving after an early morning shower, and the weather remained brilliant for the rest of the day.
When I saw the clouds in the morning, I ran over to tell Julie not to get her hopes up about a good day for photos. During the day, the cameraman told us about a bride who had scheduled her wedding photos for the previous day. He said she cried the entire time because of the rain. I doubt Julie would have cried about the weather—although, I have seen her get emotional over poorly written Chinese soap operas. And, I will now admit, the prospect of us not shooting the photographs outside did brighten my mood. But in the end, the weathermen were wrong and we got lucky. While the photo experience was as terrible for me as I hinted at yesterday, I know that the memory of pain tends to dissipate faster than the good photos and memories, and, it should go without saying, Julie’s happiness.
Enough sappiness. I have at least 500 words left to write, and it’s time to jump into my next story idea.
Our wedding photographs taken on location in Taiwan.
Julie and I spent yesterday shooting our wedding photographs. From what I’ve been able to gather, this is an Asian custom. Either before or after the wedding, the bride and groom trek down to an overpriced photo studio and spend a couple of days choosing outfits, posing for photographs at various picturesque locations, and selecting the finished photographs. This is an extraordinarily painful exercise for the groom. The brides really seem to dig it, however. I’m told there are many such sacrifices in the course of a marriage.
Check out the slideshow for the photographs. They came out better than I expected. While I can’t now say they were worth the pain, I'm told distance (in time) tends to dull it. And the pictures, well, the pictures will last a lifetime.
It’s over. The Marathon, that is. I stuck a fork in it last night. I still don’t have a name for my “finished” story. From the looks of those quotation marks, it should be obvious my thoughts on the work. When it comes to saying nothing in many words, I have this exercise down to a science. I haven’t yet decided if this year’s writing is worse than The Pink Sweater or only almost as bad as The Pink Sweater. (I’m weaning myself away from using too many words to say something insignificant, if you hadn’t noticed.) Either way, I am once again not happy with my plot, story, or characters. And the writing, yeah, that wasn’t too good either. But other than those minor complaints, I’m generally satisfied with this year’s efforts. November is about making the Goal. The published best-selling-novelist part comes later (much, much later).
At its essence, the Marathon is about perseverance. Chuck in his wonderfully inspirational Nanowrimo podcast, The Sixty-Second Pep Talk, spent an episode talking about this. Everyone is capable of completing the Marathon. For most people, the difficulty arrives between capability and performance. A real marathon requires a certain level of fitness before a runner can even think about starting their training. The Marathon (with a capital M) requires only words. And, as I aptly demonstrated this year, the words don’t even have to make much sense when placed together. The real skill necessary for the Marathon is the ability to sit in front of a computer screen or blank paper each day and writing to a daily quota. It’s that simple. Okay, I’ll admit that it is easy for me to say that now that I’ve completed the Marathon. And perhaps it’s a bit simplistic for me to think that it doesn’t require any training to write 1,667 words in a day. Some people have not written a total of 1,667 words since completing school. What I meant to say is that at its essence the Marathon is about moving fingers for a month. The doing is hard work. But you have to ask yourself, if it wasn’t hard work, would it really be worth all that much?
With that said, this year was a struggle for me. There were many days where I started later than I planned, and then invariably blamed Julie for my procrastination. She would insist that we eat around dinnertime, and I would roll my eyes and point my finger at her and claim that she was single-handedly attempting to hinder the talents of a would-be-best-selling novelist with her insistence on sustenance. I would always feel terrible later, and crawl back to her to apologize profusely. As always, Julie understood and supported me by dealing with my insanities. She even tried to assist early in my story planning. (She’s very helpful with my planning. Remember, she rescued The Killton Academy for the Insane from terribleness.) But after the first week, I realized that her help was no longer necessary because there was nothing to plan as I did not possess even the semblance of a story.
After I arrived in Taiwan, my last four days of the Marathon were particularly painful in the literal sense: late-night headaches ascended from the lowest levels of hell to torment me as I stared at a blindingly bright screen in a darkened room attempting to convince myself that the pain would go away if I wrote just one more word. For the record, the pain did not go away with each word. If anything, it intensified into a blinding point of insanity until I finished the two-thousandth word and put down the computer for the healing confines of blissful sleep.
But the worst part of this year’s efforts were the uncountable days and nights where I sat in front of my computer knowing that my story had ground to a halt, my characters had abandoned me (and never bothered to write to at least let me how they were doing), and my plot, well, my plot, which had seemed so promising in my head weeks before, had turned out to have abandoned all semblance of coherency only to be replaced by a vacant pit so deep and discouraging that I was divinely gifted in the most visceral sense with the knowledge that this year’s story was an unmitigated failure. (Chuck wrote me mail as I penned this entry letting me know that I may be too close to the story; that it only took me 40,000 words to find a story peeking out of the ground. I wish to thank him for his sincere encouragement. I must be still too close to the story to consider anything more than an attempt by a good friend to keep me writing no matter how terrible the output.)
Through all these obstacles and excuses, I did manage to write my 2,000 (well, 1,700 on the last day to hit the Goal) words each day. And I even came away with a few nuggets of wisdom:
I’ve grown to accept first-draft quality in my Marathon writing. It took me a few days of writing, but I somehow managed to write without worrying about quality. Part of the cause was my decision to lock my writing. Although I did unlock the story for a few readers, my knowing that most people could not see the writing quality lowered my fears. (For as much as I claim not to care about the readers, I obviously do care—even if there are no actual readers besides the ones for whom I unlocked the writing, with the exception of my Mom, and as the above should make aptly clear, she did not miss much.) I’m hoping this first-draft acceptance spills over into my short-story writing. It’s a good skill to have because when I get around to it, I’m much better at the second and third draft than the first. The trick, of course, is getting around to it.
I discovered that saying the same things multiple times was good not only for my word count, but also for the quality of the story. I know that sounds ridiculous after everything I’ve said about how bad my story was this year. I have a tendency to keep my writing short and to the point—it’s the same tendency I have when speaking. When I talk, I am always watching the other person for the first signs of boredom. That doesn’t always allow me to relate my ideas fully. There are times where I stop talking, even though it would be better if I continued to explain the idea a few different ways. Similarly, when writing, I sometimes say too little to fully develop the idea. I leave too much unsaid about what I already know but the reader has no way of knowing. Repetitiveness, at least in a first draft, is better. There’s always the cutting floor after the second draft.
After writing 2,000 words for the past twenty-two days, I’ve decided not to take a break. If I want to pretend to be a serious writer, then I have to write every day. I won’t promise 2,000 words every day (today I came up a few hundred short of that goal), and I certainly won’t promise that the writing will be of any quality or related to a story. What I will promise is that I will sit down and pound out at least 1,000 words of musing or story or story planning, or some combination every day. We’ll see how this works out.
Word count: 1,780
Words remaining: 0 (words so far: 50,071)
Thoughts: That’ll put a wrap on this bad boy story. Sorry for the exposition at the end, but I did have some ideas I wanted to get out, and there was no way I could incorporate all of those ideas into an action filled last scene. Well, except for the very end. That was my little gift to me.
Today was an exceptionally rough day. Julie and I spent twelve hours getting our wedding photographs taken at various locales around Taipei. I was exhausted, and I had to take a quick nap before writing. The quick nap took longer than I expected, and I woke up late into the night to finish the Marathon and this entry. My head is pounding as I type this from a day with too little sleep, too late food, too many little-warn eye contacts, and too much work. Julie is asleep as I pound out these last sentences. I’ll hopefully post these last two entries tomorrow and call it good. Or, at least, call it done.
Word count: 2,016
Words remaining: 1,709 (words so far: 48,291)
Thoughts: I started late and I didn’t think I would finish today’s count. I thought today would be the first day that I would miss my self-imposed goal. At this point in my “story” (from the word count perspective, that is), I will not miss the Marathon’s deadline (there is more than a week left). But even knowing that, I managed to fight through the slow start and finished my count. If I’m serious about writing every day, then I can’t start making exceptions even for days when I’m tired (check), jetlagged (check), and headachy (double check). Somehow, over the last few days, my skills in word padding have increased tenfold. I wish I used some of these skills earlier in this failed project. Even my thoughts sound padded and forced. Yeah me!
Word count: 2,729
Words remaining: 3,725 (words so far: 46,275)
Thoughts: I’m biding my time trying to finish. Isn’t filler great? I can say the same thing four different ways and call it progress. Less than two days to go. I already hear them carting the fireworks into position.
Word count: 2,371
Words remaining: 6,454 (words so far: 43,546)
Thoughts: Three more days. Woo hoo!
Word count: 2,146
Words remaining: 8,825 (words so far: 41,175)
Thoughts: And the story continues to make less and less sense. As Ashken thought to himself, “This was making less and less sense.” I’m okay with that. I have about four more days of writing left, and I expect there to be a very abrupt ending once I reach the Goal. I’m done with this story. I fully accept that this was a failure in the storytelling sense. I had such big plans: robots and samurais and lost religions and finding meaning in choices and growing up. But alas, none of that came about. All I ended up with was meaningless whiney characters who didn’t develop and do much. And I won’t even go into the inner turmoil or the repeated thoughts. But that’s okay, as I said. There’s always next time and the time after that and the time after that. As long as I keep putting one word in front of the next, I’ll get the hang of this.
Word count: 2,398
Words remaining: 10,961 (words so far: 39,029)
Thoughts: I need to keep moving and stop trying to write filler, at least on my first run through the words. Filler is time consuming to create. I will write short and sweet sections, and then go back and fill in the gaps later to pad the words. Yes, I’m writing instructions for Marathon writing after my terrible efforts yesterday. I’m hoping typing worlds will get me moving again. It feels like I don’t know where this is going and because of that I can’t go anywhere. Not that there’s anywhere I can take this story that would be interesting or worthwhile. I’m thinking of it backwards: I have to write it first and then once I’ve written it I’ll find out where it goes. That’s much easier said than done.
I’m leaving for Taiwan tonight. I will continue writing every day but I might not be able to post every day. Until that number above passes 50,000, expect me to keep plodding away. (Another five days should do it. It won’t be pretty but it will be finished.) Things may get a bit challenging with the loss of a day on the flight. I’ll try to figure out whether I have to write on the plane, or if I can write tomorrow—I mean Sunday night. Time zones are very confusing.
Word count: 2,042
Words remaining: 13,369 (words so far: 36,631)
Thoughts: Okay, so I managed to say nothing in 2k words today. I don’t know why I couldn’t move the story forward (as if there is much of a story to move forward), but I couldn’t and didn’t. I guess there’s always tomorrow. At least I ate up more words. Mmm…tasty.
Word count: 3,050
Words remaining: 15,411 (words so far: 34,589)
Thoughts: It started terrible, but toward the end, the caffeine fought my headache, and I wrote words.
Word count: 2,267
Words remaining: 18,461 (words so far: 31,539)
Thoughts: I experimented with a flashback to see if it would get me out of my funk. I should stop wasting my time with politics. I’m just not good at it. And writing too. I’m definitely not good at that. At least the words came easier today. I spent most of the time telling instead of showing—but somehow, the telling ate up the words. I guess there are worse things. Now, if only I spent October telling so I could have spent November showing, the world would be a better place and dogs and cats, well, you know where I’m going with that. It’s getting worse. I’ve completely lost all coherencies in the story. I don’t even know where it’s heading or what it’s about. Ah, now I remember: words. Lots of them. This will be heading to the trash bin soon enough. I just need to cross the line to start crumpling.
Word count: 2,017
Words remaining: 20,718 (words so far: 29,272)
Thoughts: The blank page scares me today. I have to stand up to it. I’m bigger, stronger, and by golly it’s not going to scare me. Not again. Can’t I just kill all my characters in a large fire and be done with this badly thought-out, worse-ly written story? Isn’t that how all happy endings happen? Okay. I’m going to start writing now. Enough of this white page staring. That’s 69 words I wish I had written for my story. Help! It’s still not happening. Agh, this is going to be another one of those days with another one of those bad sections that don’t make any sense (unlike the rest of my nonsensical story). I was very tired when I finished writing this. I was out late, and I wasn’t able to finish it earlier as I had planned. Some of the plot points kept changing—I’m sorry for the inconsistency to my one reader. I do have an idea about where this is going, but I made some wrong choices along the way. Who am I kidding? I have no idea what I’m talking about anymore. I’m just trying to make my word count. I’ve given up on this whole notion of “coherency” and “storytelling.” Now I’m all about word count. If two words make sense together, consider that sentence a good one. Unlucky 13.
Word count: 2,475
Words remaining: 22,745 (words so far: 27,255)
Thoughts: Not a strong day. But things kind of happened, I guess. And there were words of some sort, so I guess that’s good. I need to move forward and get away from this constant fake action. Maybe get back to more thinking and doing nothing. That seemed to make the words move faster or something.
Word count: 2,261
Words remaining: 25,220 (words so far: 24,780)
Thoughts: Ah, I thought I had something today. I had big plans and I felt the words would roll out of me. Again, I admit I was wrong. Now, if I can only fight through this and get my words for the day, I’ll be happy. Another day where I felt my writing, my dialogue, my descriptions, my inane internal discussions were absolutely painful and worthless. Oh well. I’m keeping to the goal. On days like this, all I can think about is first-draft quality, first-draft quality. Almost halfway done!
Word count: 2,091
Words remaining: 27,481 (words so far: 22,519)
Thoughts: Today did not flow as well as yesterday, at least in the beginning. I kept starting and stopping, and the siren’s call of the internet was, well, siren-y. But things happened, and they happened of their own volition. It’s not necessarily what I had planned, but when the drumming starts, what am I supposed to do? March forward, of course. I did start figuring things out toward the end, though. It's weird how things start becoming clear after I've written them--like some of the foreshadowing that I had no idea what it meant until now. Strange things are afoot in Washen's Enclave. Strange things.
Word count: 3,059
Words remaining: 29,572 (words so far: 20,428)
Thoughts: Today was easier. The story is no better, but the words were not painful (at least on the way out—no idea how they’ll feel on the way in). I guess I should be thankful for little things.
Word count: 2,003
Words remaining: 32,631 (words so far: 17,369)
Thoughts: This is going to be a long night of writing. After yesterday’s deathfest, I’m fresh out of ideas and places to go. That’s not completely true. I do know where the characters will go, I just don’t want to take them there. Surprise, surprise. I need to think of something clever to get this moving again. I thought a game of Freecell would help. It didn’t. Don’t believe those little voices in your head. They’re usually trying to lead you astray. At least I can write filling. Today was about filling. I was hoping for the creamy filling. I settled for stale and stifling. Terrible, terrible, terrible! The misery, the pain and horror and all sorts of dark and nasty thoughts. I take deep breaths and try to push over one thousand. Just a hundreds words at a time, just another hundred and you’ll be done soon. Really. Can this story move any slower? Can nothing happen for this many words before my computer explodes? Stay tuned until tomorrow to find out. I need an outline of scenes. I need to know where this is going, what I’m going to spend my time on. If I have to spend my writing days like this much more, this will be an impossible month. Much consternation today. Much wasted consternation, I should say. Much resist sticking my finger down my throat. Must. Resist.
Word count: 2,296
Words remaining: 34,634 (15,366 words so far)
Thoughts: This is the first words. I stared at the blank page for what seemed an eternity today. I figured if I can’t write the first words up there, I’d write the first words down here and see if that gets me typing. It did. So many death soliloquies. I knew I had to get parts of this exposition out, but I didn’t realize how painful it would be to write. Yes, I know, “just die already, Tenos!” I was thinking the same thing the entire time I was typing away. Luckily, this writing is about words, and the easiest way to write words is to stick them in a dying man’s mouth, or so I learned today.
Word count: 2,314
Words remaining: 36,930 (13,070 words written so far)
Thoughts: It was difficult starting today. I lost some momentum after yesterday. An inner part kept telling me that I’m wasting my time, that my story is valueless and hopeless, and if true (and it’s hard to argue that it’s not true), why would I bother continuing with it. And to that inner part I responded by typing, as I do each day, the “Word count:” and “Words remaining:” headings, knowing that at some point today, I would fill them in and post this. My inner part does have some interesting points. This is not the time, however, to analyze those arguments. That’s for December. It was a struggle getting any of these words down. I did have a direction, thanks to a discussion with Julie about my story. It felt good telling her the story (she is a bit behind on the reading). She made a few suggestions, and I took them. I realized with her help that it was time I moved the story forward. I knew what had to happen, but I was too lazy to make it happen. It’s not that I had any feelings one way or the other (with this bad writing, how can anyone have feelings?), I was just tired of this whole scene and I wanted it done with. Today’s mantra: write to the goal, write to the goal.
Word count: 2,253
Words remaining: 39,244 (10,756 words written so far)
Thoughts: I wrote a few lines, particularly some of the dialogue, and felt like sticking an ice pick into my eyes. I somehow resisted the urge and left the words in to increase the count for the day. I started late but found the words rather easily. Action scenes seem to eat them up rather quickly. Shakespeare none of this will ever be. Okay, so I deleted the disgustingly horrible dialogue. It was terrible. Truly terrible. You’re probably asking yourself how it can be worse than what’s currently there. Trust me, if you read it, you’d probably go blind. I’ve done you a favor.
Word count: 2,298
Words remaining: 41,497 (8,503 total words written)
Thoughts: I don’t know how many times I had to remind myself that this is only a first draft today. It wasn’t that I edited—I’ve outgrown that nuisance. It’s just that I can’t stand how terrible my writing is. I know it’s bad when I’m writing, but I keep putting one word in front of the next, taking the steps that I know bring me closer to my Marathon goal if not my real goal. I spend most of my fantasies on imaging rewriting my old stories, turning them into something they’re not. Okay, enough procrastinating. I’ve found the secret to word output: write on a computer with flaky internet access.
Word count: 2,097
Words remaining: 53,795 (6,205 words in)
Feeling: I know it’s terrible. The writing. The story. The typing. But that’s what this is all about: writing lots of terrible things. This is one of the reasons I put a lock on the writing. The less people that read the first draft, the better I’ll feel—irrespective of what I’ve said in the past about not caring about my non-existent audience. The last half was easier, faster. The not caring about the writing and the not editing certainly helped. I really wanted to get my characters out of the house—but it wasn’t to be today. Until tomorrow.
Word count: 2,078
Words remaining: 45,892
Thoughts: I realized I wasn’t enjoying myself with yesterday’s writing. I tried to change that today. The name “Ashken” reminded Julie of Ashton Kutcher. While this pained me greatly, I did like the name “Ashken” when I thought it up, and since I like to pretend Ashton Kutcher does not exist, Ashken stays. Sorry, Julie! (Although, now that Julie told me this, every time I type Ashken, I think of Ashton. It hurts me physically to admit this.) I have nothing. I thought today I would enjoy this, that the story would begin to flow and characters would reveal themselves. Instead, I brought in uninteresting characters to do uninteresting things. Isn’t it nice to have a place to waste words? Too bad these words don’t go toward my count. I could write thousands of these. Now, if I can only write a few hundred more of the other words, I can call this a day. Two days and my anxiety levels are increasing. I can’t wait to see how I am tomorrow. Things improved when I wrote past the thousand mark. I went back and filled in all the holes I left in my earlier writings. Sometimes it’s easier and more efficient to flesh out a scene than to write a new one. Now, if I only knew what the next scene entailed.
Word count: 2,030
Remaining words: 47,970
Feeling: I wrote too much exposition and not enough of the story. The ideas were there and I wanted to get them out. I was also guilty of editing quite a bit. First day jitters, I hope. Once I get into a better flow, I will stop worrying about style and grammar and substance, and start barfing on the page. Trust me, I’m a big fan of barfing. It’s just that it takes a while to find the sweet spot when I stick my finger down my throat. I was stuck at about 1,000 words. I forced too much. I was afraid to make things happen. Luckily, tomorrow is a brand new day, with another 2,000-word goal. Oh joy.
