Day 8: Ouch?
April 8, 2001
5:16 p.m.
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6,150 words:  I'm in stride now and it feels pretty okay. I made it to the end of what I'm thinking of as the beginning of the book today. I'm officially through the sections I was dragging my way through in the previous months, and I think things are in pretty good shape. The past two days, I've started to feel it in my spine, you know? The story is beginning to go where I want it to go, and I'm starting to like it again. I'm struck by a line in Almost Famous (which Lisa and I watched Friday night) wherein a groupie from the late sixties or early seventies watches a collection of new groupies come into their world and complains about them. "Look at them," she said in lost and wondrous sincerity. "They're not real fans. They don't use birth control, and they eat all the steak. I bet they don't even know what it's like to love a song--or just a single piece of music--so much that it hurts." I think that somewhere in the process of creation, a writer--or anyone who creates--needs to love his or her work so much that it hurts. It doesn't matter if that work is a song, or a comic strip, or a story, or whatever. If your work says something to you, it's worth doing. And if you're good at your work, and it says something to you, I believe it will say something to someone else. I'm sitting here right now fairly pleased. My work is talking to me. It's growing on me. I see parts of the characters I hadn't seen before. I feel themes coming out that I knew were there, but hadn't been focusing on hard enough to make real. We'll see where all this excitement comes out in the end, of course. Never promise anything based on 20,000 words. But right now it looks pretty good for the home team. Like the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but I feel good.   Have a great day. See you tomorrow.   What do you mean, no guarantees? Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"I know some great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much." Anne Lamott |
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