‘Wax on, wax off,’ My Ass!
For the record, I’m not referring to the actual waxing of my ass….
<SMILE>
It took me until 3 PM today to fulfill the left-over Friday’s 500 words to meet that day’s 1000 word quota. Now, I still have to write today’s 1000…. Listen, it’s not a piece of cake. (What is a cake walk? What’s up with all the cake? Cake is not so easy, unless it’s that ‘crazy cake’ recipe that doesn’t require eggs or dairy, therefore kosher, and can be all mixed in one bowl.)
I totally devolved today. I frittered time on the internet, rolled about on the carpet, did twenty mini crunches, listened to Rough Trade, ate a Raisinwich cookie (my Favourite!!!), disrupted my daughter who is studying for final exams, was delighted when my girlfriend phoned, thawed peasant soup (not made out of peasants), read about sundew plants, looked up the meaning of my girlfriend’s name, realized I’m going to Winnipeg day after tomorrow–not next week, tasted junior high school from a tin of chicken noodle soup, traded pens with my daughter, wondered if I have to share the last of the two Raisinwich cookies with my daughter or just eat them myself, looked up the meaning of prorogue, checked email certainly over twenty times, and, now, blogging, as I yank out one word at a time, build one phrase, construct one sentence, as painful as yanking teeth out of me head….
It’s gonna be a long night, dudes.
(Did you know they’re doing a remake of Karate Kid???? Aiiiyaahhh….)
Some days the words just so flow, like water, like a ribbon of glossolalia.
Not today.
Yup. Suckin’ it up.
Hi Hiromi,
Well, I always enjoy reading your blog posts, so consider that a minor success for today. Funny you should muse on cakewalks. It’s an interesting story, see…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cakewalk
1Hi Jillian. Thank you for the link! Holy SMOKES! It’s so shocking to learn that what seems like a obscure and peculiar idiom has such a horrific and violently racist legacy. Like Dionne Brand said it in the title of her book of poetry, No Language Is Neutral. Clearly, language is _loaded_.
2A thousand words A DAY???? I think I would change 823 words the next morning. But I guess that’s the point, because those would be new words. Hm…
3alex.
Do you think a thousand new words a day is lots? (I do give myself a weekend…) I read Stephen King’s On Writing with reservations because of his ‘magical Negro’ compulsion, but I did love his books when I was in high school and he is very good with character and suspense/horror. OW was actually good and useful on many levels (tho I didn’t agree with everything). Anyway, I bring him up because he said that he wrote 10 PAGES a day. I nearly wept. I used to commit to 500 words a day, but after reading this I’ve upped the count. I met yesterday’s 1000 at 11:08PM. So far– manageable.
4I think it depends on what I’m working on — if it’s something where the language is dense, then, yes, 1000 words would be unmanageable… But the thing I’m writing now is not as dense and I have the action largely planned, so I’m writing more than 1000 a day. But if I had to write 1000 a day *no matter what* I don’t think I could deliver something I’d be happy with afterward, on all levels (language, pacing, etc). I’ve heard this argument from novelists before…that the most important thing is to get stuff down on the page & you can edit/revise later. But if I write something I’m unhappy with for the sake of getting *something* down on the page, I feel trapped by where that something took the story. I hate getting off-track for the sake of speed; then it takes even more time to get back to where I want to be. So that is my counter-argument.
I’ll see if SK’s book is in the library! Always willing to have my mind changed.
5I agree– sprinting through the forest can be blinding, can trip you up, can send you barreling down the wrong path…. I prefer the slightly meandering and observant walking-pace kinda journey. But sometimes the deadline demands.
6