It Don’t Have to Be Shakespeare

I’m not exactly sure how to go about talking about my day or writing out loud, so I guess I’ll just start with the day itself.

The Day

I actually gave a fair amount of thought to how I wanted to structure my day where I might have fun with my work and yet get my work done without a lot of drama.  In fact, I tossed and turned a lot last night.  Woke up at least three or four times, and each time I thought about this blog, what I might write, how to put it all down.  It wasn’t until this morning as I was getting out of bed, kissing the husband good-bye, and making my one (and only) cuppa that it came to me: make a schedule and stick to it.

The first thing I did?  I didn’t check my email.  I didn’t check Facebook.  I didn’t look through the news.

Instead, I made a schedule, the way I used to in medical school.  The husband laughs about it now, but he always commented on how I was the most structured and organized person he knew.  I had things planned down to the quarter hour; that’s how organized I was, and I stuck to that schedule just about every day.

I have still done that, but I’ve noticed that work truly does expand to fill the time allotted.  In the past year and a half, going on two years almost, I’ve been so consumed with house stuff and moving that every little thing took on way more importance than it was worth and all of it had to be done right now.

Silly.  Yes, I know, but only in retrospect.

There is very little in life that is life or death–though not if you ask the cats.  To them, if I don’t feed them right away…they wonder if perhaps this is the big I-T: the last meal they’ll ever have and that only in memory because it will have happened either last night or within the last five minutes.  To a cat, once it’s gone, it’s gone.

I digress.

So, the day: made a schedule.  The only iPad time I spent was to figure out what to make for dinner (which I ended up jettisoning anyway because I ran out of time and so improvised).  Shoved all my emails and phone calls to the afternoon when the cat groomer was supposed to show.  Since I knew I’d have to break off then anyway, I figured that was as good a time as any to deal with email and all that.  Honestly, there’s very little that can’t wait.

I’d already outlined where I wanted to go with the book last night, so I just opened her up and started working at 7:30.  Wrote–with some breaks to move around–until the cat groomer showed up at 1:30.  There were a few interruptions: the pest control guy to tell me that they were putting in the new crawl space door and then a contractor I’m meeting with on Wednesday who came by to show a subcontractor the work we want done on the deck (all of which has to come down and be rebuilt from the ground up unless we want people crashing to their deaths).

Once the groomer arrived, I made my phone calls, dealt with my email, and paid bills.

By the time she was done (Timmy now has new white nail caps because he is a true stinker), I’d done all the housekeeping, the laundry.  Hadn’t walked much, only 1000 steps give or take, so it was off to first shop and then the gym.  Got in my two hours  of exercise; put in 13,723 steps which I know is wrong because I watched the number not change as I trudged on the treadmill and then sweated down to a grease spot on the elliptical.  (Remember me to talk about my new Samsung Gear S2, though; my goodness, I never thought I’d ever like having a smartwatch, but this is actually quite a nice little gadget.)  Was at the gym long enough to see the husband wander in after work, so I knew I was running a little late.  So, after the gym, I went home and oh my goodness, the fog atop the mountain was so bad that I not only almost missed my street, I completely overshot the driveway.  Negotiating the driveway was a little touch and go, too.

Then, made dinner, cleaned up.  And the day is done.

***

So why the Shakespeare?

Because, somehow and over the past year and a half, I’ve gotten it into my head that I must write amazing fiction at all times.  Yes, I’ve gotten seduced/trapped/fucked up by the book-as-event thing, I guess–or this may be all simply a function of my own insecurity about writing these days (as in I am convinced I can’t do it anymore, which is ridiculous; even I recognize that).  I can’t say I always have fun writing because some days feel like torture and I wonder what I was thinking.  But compared to, say, an eighth-grade teacher’s typical day or a construction worker’s . . . I’ve got it easy.  I mean, I sit in a room and make stuff up, and sometimes I’m even paid for it.

So today, before I sat down, I said, out loud (the cats will swear to it): “It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare.  It just has to be done.”

Then I sat down and hammered through the section I’d set as my goal for the day, and got even further on than I thought I would.  So far, in fact, that I ought to be done with this part of the book in another day or so, and then it’s on to uncharted territory: sections I do not have to rewrite, all new stuff but armed with everything that I now know but didn’t when I originally conceived of the book.

I have a friend who keeps a daily tab of how many words he’s written per day and words, total, to date.  He also counts in email and cover designs and other things that I don’t do or don’t . . . ?count? . . . in my daily word total.  For example, this blog–right this second–is 1036 words . . . no, make that 1037 . . . no, that’s 1040 . . .

You see where I’m going.

I don’t know if I’ll do that for the long haul (or even keep up with this for the long haul), but what I can say is this.

The working title for my new book is THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOON, but I think it’s a placeholder and I’ll figure out something better eventually.  But that’s what it is for now.

So, today, which I’ll put down at Day 1 even though I’ve been working on this for the last month:

FAR SIDE OF THE MOON

Day 1: 4,326 words

Words to date: 55,743  (expect the total to fluctuate as I add and delete, though)

***

So this is also Year One, Month One, Day One of Writing in Public,  which includes these blog posts but does not include FB posts, tweets, etc.

Blog Posts: 1,549 new words

***

My one news thing of the day: it was a tossup between something on gun control or climate change.  I finally chose climate change because I just get so frustrated with people who say that this warming is normal or the science isn’t in or. . . .I can’t even make myself go through the litany.

So, take a good hard look at this:

Yes, that is a bicyclist today negotiating his way through the worst smoke that particular Chinese city has seen to date this year (and we’re not even talking about the horrific and ongoing smog in Dehli. (And what boggles the mind?  Accusations that other countries are being even as, say, India’s citizens are choking.  In fact, people are so hung up on the idea of fairness when it comes to climate change that this effectively gets in the way of any meaningful negotiation.  In a word?  We need to get rid of this idea of fairness–but don’t take my word for it.

And then read this article on China’s climate change report in the New York Times.

If this doesn’t make you scared (and a little sick), I don’t know what will.  On the other hand, we don’t seem to be able to make any meaningful moves on gun control either–and there, we’ve got actual dead people.  So you’ll pardon me if I’m a little cynical here.

And no: don’t talk to me about flying off to terraform Mars.  It’s a nice dream; I like science fiction and pretty movies as much as the next person.  But get real.  Not only would it be a massive waste of resources . . . we haven’t demonstrated that we can take care of the perfectly good planet we’ve got.

All I gotta say is those climate talks in Paris better amount to something.

I remember something Al Gore said in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, about how we shouldn’t respond with despair.

But let me tell you, folks: go to Norway and stand on rubble where before there was a magnificent glacier that had endured for thousands of years only to virtually disappear in less than ten . . . and it’s hard not to.