[From Sunday]
As any of you who write surely know, there are some days when the words come freely. When you sit down and can fill half a notebook in a sitting, or when the word count in your electronic file keeps ticking further and further upward.
This weekend has not been one of those times. I’m not sure if it’s tiredness–either generally or from staring at a computer most of the hours of every day–but I’m having to pluck out each and every word. Part of the problem is probably that I’ve been working on the first chunk of TWICE BITTEN, editing text I’ve already written. The text seemed awkward, which is why I’m working on it, especially since any review I’m providing of FRIDAY NIGHT BITES has to happen in this chapter (i.e., in order to know how much review to put into later chapters, I have to get this first chapter right). It also doesn’t help that even the bit I’m editing seems unduly awkward.
Add all that together, and writing can feel more like a chore than an escape, a chance to pretend to be someone else. When writing feels more like a mathematics of words than storytelling. But the words will (probably) come again. Life, someone told me today, is like a sine curve. Crests. Troughs. Highs. Lows. Writing, in my experience, is pretty much the same.
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