Writing accountability. 20 minutes, 555 words. “Humans came from the sea, you know – our bodies remember. Gills to breathe, adaptations to our lungs and their linings, help for your eyes to see without light, better swimming skills and more strength.”
It feels like I’m writing in such tiny increments, I can’t possibly be making progress, but the first two weeks of the semester total: 2882 words, about 500 / day, writing 8 days out of 14. (I try to take weekends off, and occasionally miss a day.) That’s half a story, roughly. This is a middle-grade book I’m writing, which is usually 25-50K words, so a tenth of a book since the semester started? And I have faith it’ll get better, if I just keep going.
***
Today is a complicated day — prep for teaching and teach, come home and go to the dentist for regular cleaning, which I REALLY want to cancel and reschedule, we’ll see. I’m sorry dentists, I hate visiting you. Just hate it. It’s not you, it’s me. Well, it’s also you.
I have a late evening meeting with a school board colleague, and I promised her dinner because the poor thing is coming straight from a long day at her day job, so some cooking tonight. The cleaners come tomorrow, so I really ought to put away my massive pile of clean clothing, which I’ve been just failing to deal with for two weeks now. Sigh. Well, we’ll see.
Pics are from Friday — I was staying late on campus for a job talk, and so I decided to not be a wimp and just go to a writer’s meet-up I’d been invited to. Which, it turned out, was really fun, hanging out and talking to lots of writers about writing and teaching and the life.
Though I’ll warn you, they make the drinks quite strong at our Chicago local KOVAL Distillery — I’m usually okay with 1-2 cocktails over the course of 3 hours, with food. But even though I ate before going and chowed down on tasty cashews there, I got very tipsy very quickly, and stayed that way! The cocktails were delicious — blackberry sour, and the bee’s knees.
***
One funny moment — I was trying to talk to someone two seats away, and I kept asking her to repeat herself, because it was just loud enough that I couldn’t quite hear, and apologizing, and then the woman between us asked if I’d like to switch seats with her, so I’d be in the middle…
…and I had a moment of, “Am I really old enough that my hearing is that much worse than the 30 and 40-somethings at this table?” My pride hesitated for a moment, and then I just had to laugh and say, “Yes, that’d be great, thanks!”
The writer in her 50s, ah well…
