words written so far: 800

Eijo: If I get 1,200 words down in a day then I feel pretty good about life, so I’ve got a little way to go yet. Maybe I’ll catch a second wind and bust out 1,600 or even 2,000 in all (before I fall into a stupor of salty snack foods and late-night tv) — it’s happened before, by god. I mark those days on my desk calender.

Made an odd discovery the other day. I’d been working on a medieval gangster story for several months, but I couldn’t get Chapter 1 right. I’d work the outline then break off and write the prose blind, which never goes well because without an outline I tend to wander off into nonsense territory where robots show up for no good reason, or the main character abandons the plotline in order to take an unplanned roadtrip down to Saragosa for some Mexican sushi and a movie. Then I’d scratch the whole dang thing and start again with a new outline, maybe jot down some random notes or bits of dialogue, anything to get me unstuck.

I wrote the Chapter 1 five times, but no matter what I did I couldn’t get it to sing. So I tried one… more… time. Got a page in then threw up my hands, cursed the story gods, and walked away.

For the past month, I’ve focused on my detective story co-starring Satan (or a guy who smells a lot like him) — but by chance I picked up my medieval gangster notebook and flipped it open. Read the single page I’d written in that sixth iteration of Chapter 1 and BLAM! It was good! What the crap? I’d finally figured out how to tackle the opening and then I just walked away? What the heck was wrong with me?

So I sat right down and picked up where I left off. Now Chapter 1 is chuggin’ along and I’m feeling pretty good. But where does that leave the detective story? I dunno, maybe I’ll pick it up again in a month and say, “Why did I stop writing this!” I’ve never been good at focusing on one thing.

Today’s song is PJ Harvey’s “In the Dark Places” — every song on her latest album, Let England Shake, is an instant classic but this tune’s the one that gets me movin’ while I’m trying to sweat a few more words onto the page.