All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone

- Blaise Pascal

Channeling my inner Holly Golightly.

In the last week and two days I have proven – in spades and in excess – that I am capable of sitting quietly in a room alone.

Hell, I thrive quietly in a room alone.

I’m like a low-maintenance houseplant.

Or a cat with access to a dripping faucet and an open feedbag.

Go about your business and don’t worry about little old me. Just leave a light on and let a neighbor know I exist, okay?

All the same, I’m kind of appalled at my own absence.

Five days?
How did five days get by me?

Well, for starters, I’m sitting quietly – minus the ticky tacky tapping of Macbook keys – in a room alone all the livelong day (and night).

I could be on Mars for all I (or you) know.

Secondarily, I’m writing a chapter a day.

I should be proud of this, but the thing of it is, my (overly, I now realize) aggressive schedule had me writing two a day.

Two!?!?

Who do I think I am?

Joyce Carol Oates?

(I once read that on a real roll she writes 40 pages a day, so she is my Parthenon of big-time page quota writing)

Doing my laundry old school. Feeling very salt of the earth and wondering to myself, "Do I own any clothes that aren't gray?"

Anywho, I’ve been writing a chapter a day, which honestly isn’t easy, and due to my own strange (inspired?) idea to have the first ten chapters be parallel and modern-day retellings of the life of Christ ages 30 to 32, they’re tedious as well. In addition to the time spent doing said writing, I spend about two hours a day reading Biblical interpretations.

Which I kind of hate.

Okay, I hate it a lot.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hate Jesus…but when you’re dreaming about the man in a scholarly kind of way, you’ve possibly/probably/definitely gone too far.

Anyway, I’m working like a dog and making daily progress. Despite this, I’ve been growing increasingly despairing.

“Why?” you ask.

Well, if you’d been paying attention, you’d know I’m growing increasingly despairing because I thought I could write two chapters a day, and it just ain’t happening.

So self-admonition and “mañana, mañana” kick in until today, when the landlord sneeringly asks me, “So are you getting any writing done? Or do you have writers’ block?”

“No,” I told him, “I’ve written nine chapters.”

The sheer look of shock was enough to make me realize that although I may not be JCO (see above for secret decoder ring), but I am doing pretty darn good.

And then he stammered, “Wow. You’re a disciplined writer.”

I only buy cereal that's at least four times the size of my head. And yes, the house really is as round and pink and freakishly fluorescent light lit as it seems here. I've grown accustomed...

And THEN he went and made my day (sort of) by adding that he’s happy if he writes a chapter a month.

I don’t have any clue what it is that he’s writing, but whatever.

Doing some quick math, I calculated that on his ‘aggressive’ plan, it would take me three years to write this book. So two or three months instead of one ain’t too shabby.

And it certainly isn’t three years.

So yay me.

In other news:

• The first day I got a funky tan from my ever-present necklaces, but I have hence removed now-not-so-much-ever-present necklaces and evened that mess out.

• Last night, in a fit of “I’m sick of corn tortillas and beans” I made cabbage rolls (any of you with any kind of Eastern European or Russian heritage know what I”m talking about), and they were wonderful. And I ate more for breakfast. And more again tonight for dinner. And there are still five left. Happiness…

• I was trying to trim an errant hair with oversized scissors and cut a chunk out of my eyebrow. Oh well. It’s hair. It’ll grow back.

• I have a girl crush on Ellie, the fast-talking Mexican maid. Not my maid, mind you. I do my own laundry and dishes and sweeping and cleaning. Not that I mind. It’s kind of a simplified, hand-hewn Little House on the Prairie-type existence. Anyway, back to Ellie, she’s so sweet and doesn’t seem to care a lick that I only understand about 30% of what she says. And she’s willing to try all kinds of words until she stumbles into some vocabulary I recognize. The same cannot be said for everyone…  Enough said.

• I miss TV. A lot.

• I am really damn tired (it’s a little after midnight here) due in large part to the aggressive ray of sun that shines directly on my face every morning at 7:00am and my persistent very late night bedtimes. In other words, I couldn’t let another day go by without posting something, but in just a few more words that’s all there is to say. Be good. More soon.

Since I’m on a mini-roll here, I figured I’d just stay with the same topic one more day.

That stated, do you know this poem?

Pondering the deep questions of life, like what's for lunch.

It’s been on my bathroom mirror for the last eight months, and I can attest that its message is absolute truth.

There’s maybe a little planning and organization that could go into the process that he doesn’t mention, but mostly he’s dead on: The words just come…or they don’t.

Any attempt to force them will sound that way and feel that way and you’ll end up deleting them anyway. It’s as implausible as it is true.

So You Want To Be A Writer

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,

don’t do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your

heart and your mind and your mouth

and your gut,

don’t do it.

if you have to sit for hours

staring at your computer screen

or hunched over your

typewriter

searching for words,

don’t do it.

if you’re doing it for money or

fame,

don’t do it.

if you’re doing it because you want

women in your bed,

don’t do it.

if you have to sit there and

rewrite it again and again,

don’t do it.

if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,

don’t do it.

if you’re trying to write like somebody

else,

forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of

you,

then wait patiently.

if it never does roar out of you,

do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife

or your girlfriend or your boyfriend

or your parents or to anybody at all,

you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,

don’t be like so many thousands of

people who call themselves writers,

don’t be dull and boring and

pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-

love.

the libraries of the world have

yawned themselves to

sleep

over your kind.

don’t add to that.

don’t do it.

unless it comes out of

your soul like a rocket,

unless being still would

drive you to madness or

suicide or murder,

don’t do it.

unless the sun inside you is

burning your gut,

don’t do it.

when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

–Charles Bukowski

…and unapologetically hopeful.

So barring further plot/substance/pacing/general reviews of Twilight, the movie, I will say that at the end, I became curious (and why, I do not know and/or cannot accurately recall) about the story of the writer and how she became published.

And, lo and behold, she has detailed said experience on her website.

And, second lo and behold (!) #2, it’s not entirely different from my own experience (dreaming characters, general serendipity, feeling that things are almost writing themselves at times).

But most strikingly, she references Janet Evanovich as to how she got published in the end.

And Janet E. is my one and only go-to source on all things getting an agent and getting published. She’s the reason I feel like I need an agent. And she was, in a manner of speaking, my coach and encourager through the first book, although she managed that via CD and without knowing that I exist.

But still.

p.s.

98,333 words = Book #2 = DONE.

Meaning, if nothing else, that I am more than a one-trick pony.

I am at least a two-trick pony.

Scratch that.

$2500 NEEDED.

The closest distance between two points is the straight line known as the Esquire Fiction Contest.

With a deadline of August 1st (and publication and a prize of $2500 for the winner), there are only two rules:

a. The story can’t exceed 4000 words.

b. It has to have one of the following titles

1. “Twenty-Ten”

2. “An Insurrection”

3. “Never, Ever Bring This Up Again”

There’s no working with #2. I am left cold by “An Insurrection.”

Twenty-ten makes me think maybe I could find a good Bible quote or something about military time or an address or at least there’s some vague potential.

Obviously #3 is the best one, but here’s where I hit a wall: What the hell do you men want to read about!?

This is Esquire magazine, afterall. The Elle or InStyle for men. The story has to be something dudes dig.

My mind races all over on plotlines (and subject matter to never be spoken of again), but I have no idea if it’s appropriate or workable or – and most importantly – of interest to boys.

So help a girl out!

Finance another year of the folly known as the blog and throw a dog a bone here: What’s funny? What’s interesting? What would hold your interest for 4000 words!?!?!?

(and if I get nothing out of you, yes I will start throwing out my own sad ideas for review…)

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing.”  John Steinbeck

This is where I’m at with respect to writing a novel in one month. Except less positive and more in touch with the ‘sick sense of failure.’

Thus, to motivate myself through this ‘adventure,’ I’ve combined Mr. Steinbeck’s wisdom with that of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Starship Enterprise. My mission statement has come out a little something like this:

Focus on one day at a time, explore strange new worlds, and boldly go where no wo/man has gone before…or die trying.

I printed it out and stuck it on the bathroom mirror, but if that doesn’t provide sufficient oomph, I may have to move on to writing myself a manifesto. A manifesto that can hopefully be worked into the book so as to satisfy the quantity of writing required for the day. Or a manifesto so long it becomes the book. Like the Communist Manifesto, but without the words bourgeois and proletarian. And with a philosophy wherein I still get to keep some private property, like my dog and my clothes. And that doesn’t require me to emulate a crazy Karl Marx hairdo (acknowledging that barring the unexpected, I cannot grow a beard.)

And now you see how I can spend two hours in mock debate with myself or digressing about things that have nothing to do with anything and not writing the great American (or whoever will have it) novel.

Who came up with this NaNoWriMo thing anyway? And why did I think it was a good idea? It’s like a marathon…except much, much longer. With a marathon, at least you know that in five hours you’re either done or you’re going to be hit by a car when they open the course to traffic, which will render you done.  

But like any ‘no pain, no gain’ discipline, I acknowledge that it’s unlikely that I will smoothly transition to a successful writing career if I don’t actually write. That only happens if you’re a celebrity with nothing to say, and they probably give you a ghost writer anyway. However, once in a while, they don’t, as evidenced by these horrifying attempts at ‘poetry’ I found while Googling “celebrity books bad.”

From Charlie Sheen’s poetry book, A Peace of My Mind:

…Teacher, teacher, I don’t understand,

You tell me it’s like the back of my hand.

Should I play guitar and join the band?

Or head to the beach and walk in the sand?

Ouch. Can poetry actually hurt you or did my appendix just burst?

Suzanne Somers chose free verse for her book of poems called Touch Me. If you thought the internal monologue of the woman behind the Thighmaster might be interesting, this poem sets you straight:

Organic girl dropped by last night

For nothing in particular

Except to tell me again how beautiful and serene she feels

On uncooked vegetables and wheat germ fortified by bean sprouts–

Mixed with yeast and egg whites on really big days–

She not only meditates regularly, but looks at me like I should

And lectures me about meat and ice cream

And other aggressive foods I shouldn’t eat.

 Who would’ve thought? The mere act of reading this crap has renewed my enthusiasm for my own comparative talent, the NaNoWriMo challenge, and the 26 days remaining…