The Truth Is
August 12, 2001
4:39 p.m.
Last night I dreamed that I was in Louisville with Lisa and Brigid, and that some foreign country nuked us. Why they would pick Louisville, I wouldn't know. It was a very realistic dream, though. Very chilling.   No. I don't want to know what it means. I have worked very hard this past two days on what I think has been the toughest section of the book. Yeah, I know. I say that about every section. But this time I mean it. This section has been like neurosurgery. Seriously. I am sitting here on Sunday afternoon staring at the screen with that absolutely numb sensation you get from total concentration for many hours in a row. It probably doesn't help that Brigid has now started writing her own novel, and whenever she comes downstairs to write she types words at a rate that astounds me. Her decision to write a book has, I think, little to do with the fact that I am writing, or the fact that I am writing a book. It has everything to do with an article in a recent edition of the Louisville paper that featured a fourteen-year-old girl who has written a pair of novels. She has decided to become competitive. Just what I need right now--competition from a fourteen-year-old girl, and my twelve-year-old daughter. Here I am, grinding out details, and my daughter is flying along. Maybe if I put up a sail I can catch a bit of her tailwind. Caroline has recently talked about rewriting both in the linked entry of her journal and on my sidebar. All I can say is that even those silly folks like me, who enjoy reworking stories, hate it sometimes. Maybe it won't work for you, but when I click on this story about Terri Clark being arrested essentially for DWI, the advertisement that gets ported in is a big 'ole Absolut slot. intenet advertising being what it is these days, maybe the ad is selected just for me and when you guys go there it'll be an advertisement for Winnie the Pooh and Tigger toys. Maybe Absolut is just in my profile. How would I know, eh? Regardless. I saw that same ad on the story I read about Ben Affleck being admitted into an alcohol clinic. Jeeze. The truth is hard to glean from a journal. I do my best to be honest, but still you just have to take my word for it. The truth today is that I've done the best work that I can do. The truth is that I've sorted out 85% of the details in this section, and that it's a good section (as defined by being what I want it to be)--or, at least it will be a good section as soon as I'm really done with it. The truth is I have one more piece of the story to create and then it's all line editing from this point. The truth is that I'm at page 499. The truth is that I'm writing this entry as a dodge because I'm too burned out on this story to look at it for at least the next half-hour. See you tomorrow.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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