Coco sleeps that hard sleep now. The old sleep, where it takes a second to wake her up. She doesn’t hear me immediately, or smell me. I wake her gently, with a rub or two, and she’s woozy for a second, and then she’s up like she’s always up. But, the sleep is harder now.
I was reading an older entry of this blog around spring of last year, the ‘early’ days of the struggle bus with this second book, and I was talking about having a breakthrough in the story. Which I’m sure it was. But, it wasn’t the breakthrough. And that was stressful to read, because here I am still working on the same project. So many plans I’ve had to let go of…
…and I had another breakthrough tonight. And I was worried that I wouldn’t feel the rush of having a good idea, but I still did. Because it is a good idea. And I realized that maybe this whole writing thing isn’t about the breakthrough, but maybe it’s about all the little ones, all the good ideas that happen when I put in the time to work on my story, and all that adds up into a finished product some day.
Some day.
I was day dreaming about finishing today, too. It didn’t matter to me how long it had been, it was simply the feeling of having finished. Despite all the struggles, being finished, happy, exhausted, elated…finished.
The writing was fraught today, but it ended up good. Listening to the Story Grid podcast helped with that. Gave me some ideas, some simple questions to ask myself. Like, what is the spectrum on which I’m turning my characters. Where do they end up, and then what is the opposite of that, and therefore my starting point.
I did a lot of random tasks today as well. I had some periods at work where I was waiting for stuff to download, so I took advantage of it. Grateful for that. We seem to be all set up to earn our companion pass for south west. I’m all packed up for re-recording the analysis/reaction section of last night’s podcast. The Warriors beat a decent team in the Grizzlies. I applied for my ESA re-certification.
Today was a remarkably productive, intense day. Not surprising given how stressed out I was last night about losing the recording. But…I woke up feeling better. I really did. Nervous about my writing. I feel out of rhythm with it…but given some of the good ideas I had today, that might just be anxiety. I wrote some good stuff today, rhythm or not.
Night.