Notes to myself

Sometimes, as I go along writing, I make myself notes, as a reminder to include those bits later. I usually put those notes at the bottom of the text I’ve already written. When I opened my vi window on my latest story this morning, I found these notes at the bottom:

• naked woman with towels
• food consumption
• bathroom bugs
• hordes

Now I’m pretty sure I know what the first three are about, and I included at least two of the three in the story, though one had to be cut out for space which I’ll explain a little later, but the last one? No idea. Hordes? That was supposed to tell me something meaningful? What could I have meant by that? Why am I so cryptic?

So the weekend turned out to be mostly a writing bust. I meant to blog as a last resort if I didn’t get any real writing done because that’s a little easier but I didn’t even get that done. All my writing was spent on making grocery lists, to do lists, pet store lists, hardware store lists, and so on. All my energy was spent on running all over town and trying to buy the things on those lists. I didn’t do much unpacking, but some progress on the house was made nonetheless. I don’t know whether every weekend will be like this or not, we’ll see. I hope at least some of the weekends are writing weekends, or at least that one of the two weekend days can be a writing day. I’m ok with having a day of rest out of the week but two is too much.

This morning was quite a test too, because there are three guys in my basement doing radon mitigation. I know nothing about this endeavor, except that it’s apparently not an activity one does quietly. They were here before I got back from dropping off Sophia, and have been here ever since, armed with power tools, so today’s efforts reflect a great deal of concentration under duress.

So, let me give the official tally. On Saturday I sneaked in a few words here and there, and managed 332 words on the new super short story called “Ennui”. I know, hardly worth mentioning except that I’m trying to be honest here. On Sunday I had no words at all. Today I wrote 1280 words on Ennui, bringing the total to 1612. Then I realized in horror that if I was going to use Ennui for this writing contest as I had planned, that it was 112 words too long. So I spent the rest of my writing time savagely snipping lovingly written words until the total stood at 1481, just under the 1500 word limit. My that’s a confining space in which to work on a short story.

I’m pleased with Ennui, and when Kurt read Loyal Companion on Friday night he found no issues at all with the ending that I had worried so much about. There’s about three things that need fixing by what he’s said, none of which are at the end, and most of those should be painless, easy fixes. I hope I can do those this week, maybe mid-week or near the weekend. I have no idea what I will write tomorrow, but I have all day to think about it. Surely something will come to me.

By the way, I’ve added a word count for the month on the blog in the right hand column. It’s a way for me to honor the spirit of NaNoWriMo without being a participant, and a way for me to know how many words go into the blog. I have just over 10,000 words now. The word paltry comes to mind as a description. If I had been successfully doing NaNoWriMo, I’d be somewhere between 30,000 and 35,000 words about now. However, as I’ve said before, I am willing to work at a slower pace if it gives me the stamina to carry out writing as a year long endeavor instead of a November one.