August 15, 2013, Thursday

I don't know if it was the phase of the moon or what, but my head was not on straight all day.

I kept trying to get a handle on the next project, trying to decide for certain which project would be the smartest to finish first.

I piddled around with other business details--print versions, etc., and allowed my funk to eat up my day. Then I talked to Supe. She hadn't had much luck either. But she wasn't giving up.

I had a long conversation with another writer. Those are important. And this call had been a few days coming. It got dark. My excuses started warming up.

Finally at 9:30 Supe called. Her busy family day hadn't had room for writing. Neither of us had written a word. How easy it would have been to say "We'll just write a lot tomorrow." But I've created a monster, a loosely stitched Frankenstein-combination of Dr. Who and Superwriter. And Dr. Supe, who doesn't like to write too late if she can help it, told me we were going to write 2500 words before we went to bed.

I argued with my own monster. "I'd write, but I don't know what I'm writing next."

"Doesn't matter," she argued back. "As long as you're writing. Just pick something and go."

*grumble, grumble, grumble*

So I sat down. Opened up a new doc into which I would paste my new words. I decided I was going to start the thriller a handful of editors are waiting to for. I only have to write about 50 pages before it goes out to them. A few days work, at this pace.

But I also wanted it to be especially good, so the pressure to write well kept me from wanting to start. Finally, I gave a name to the doc. The title of the thriller is Pieces of God, so I wrote POG PRACTICE RUN GARBAGE.

Then I opened up Dr. Wicked and started dictating the scene I've had running through my head for a few months. I wrote from 11 to 2 with a good break midway through. I ended with 19 pages finished and...

4370.

This project stands at...4370
So far this week, 13,748--nearly what I did all week last week. Another 7k tomorrow would hit the 20k goal. It will have to be next week when I go for 25k.

But here's the deal. 

I intended to write crap, and that freed me. I ended up writing really really great stuff. At the end of about the third paragraph, I busted up laughing, which made my husband jump out of his chair. (He was working in my office tonight too.) Don't worry. It's not just me. He laughed hard too, when I read it to him. So yeah, you could say the writing goes really well when you write as freely as possible. Intentionally writing crap has always worked for me. I need to remember that every damned day!

I had no idea how fast time was flying by. Took no notice at all until I ended the second chapter.

That's one of the perks of writing at night. But you gotta be able to sleep in to stay human and humane, you know?

(A quick shout out to John Brown. I don't know why, but when I was proofing this post, I was reading it with his voice in my head. Kind of like reading those posts with Morgan Freeman in them. You can't help but read it with his voice narrating. "Busted up" is something John would write. Not me. Weird.)

How did you do on Thursday? I wanna know. Anything over 0 is a victory.