Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
With school over, and my job over, and revisions on my first book turned in, I’m suddenly a girl with a lot of time to write, but without a lot of structure. It’s a strange feeling, trying to get back into working on my Work In Progress after months of revising my novel, revising my collaboration with Sona and Dhonielle, and revising my New School thesis.
Turns out, I use a whole different part of my brain for revising than I do for writing new stuff. And it’s hard to transition from one to the other. Really, really hard.
My bare minimum requirement for myself is always 1,000 words a day, and I’m doing my best to stick to that, and occasionally blow it out of the water.
The conclusion? INCONSISTENCY. Some days I feel like I’ve forgotten how to write. I am so close to finishing the first draft of the new novel, but I can’t seem to connect the dots. All my sentences sound awkward. I stare at the page for hours, I write pages of notes in my falling-apart purple notebook, but none of it feels right. I eek out 1,003 words and take a two hour nap because it was so exhausting. I decide the book is terrible. I wish I’d never started it. I wonder if it even makes sense. And then I nap some more.
Other days I am on FIRE. I write two, three thousand words. They are all exquisite words and gorgeous sentences. I have epiphanies about my characters. I down mochas and eat cheese sandwiches and don’t even sign on to gchat. I write my agent emails telling her she will receive my first draft ANY DAY NOW. I carry around my binder of notes for the middle-grade book I want to start working on. I decide I am a rock star. When people ask how the writing’s going, I smile and brag and sit up straight with pride.
So yeah. It’s an adjustment. I am not stable. I am not a machine, churning out the perfect amount of words every day. Life without work and school isn’t exactly the easy, artsy, perfect time I had in my head.
But I promise, next time you hear from me, that draft will be done. It WILL.
Photo Credit: Mental Floss
