Monday, November 27, 2006

Back To Work

Fish that clean turtles have a great work ethic. I have to watch and learn from them. If I was a cleaner wrasse or some such fish I'd be all like...In a minute! I'll get to you in a minute. I just have to decide which brush to use. Hold on! I need to wash my hands. Wait! I don't have any hands - my fins then. I need to wash my fins...

6:20 am and 76 degrees
Today the Thanksgiving holidays are over. It's my last day of graduate school until mid-January. After today I will plunge back into my WIP and editing and try not to think of my poor child adrift and bereft in New York. I have to physically restrain myself from phoning or emailing my agent every twenty minutes.
I am so obsessive!
Back to work ethic.
I need some.
Badly.
This past month I have been wallowing a bit. Rudderless. For the past several years I have been writing like one possessed and now I am more deliberate. Does slowing down my writing give me an excuse to procrastinate? Yet in many ways the work I am producing feels more finished. Polished. But there is less of it. Much less.
It is a conundrum.
I can either produce pages and pages of poop or three paragraphs of prime prose. (Gosh I love alliterations. Don't you?)
So maybe the cleaner fish has the answer.
One.
Turtle.
At.
A.
Time.
Knowing there are more turtles out there.
Much more.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the analogy "pages and pages of poop or..." :) Absolutely cannot wait to BUY your novel!!!!

PK

P.S. thanks for your help this morning ... I am obviously blog challenged -- at least you know there's no geek here!

Anonymous said...

I am so laughing at the "pages and pages of poop" statement! I know that it would be blissful if writers, in general, could simply write once and voila, polished prose; but I know for myself especially, that is never going to happen. My style is quick and dirty, and back later to fix the aggregious grammar and spelling errors, bad sentence structure, etc...
Maybe that's just what it boils down to? Writing style?
Maybe I'll know for sure in another 10 years or so...lol!

Kimber Li said...

'Dude, Dude, ha-ha, he lives! Hey Dude!'

'Hangin' with the jellies, you got serious thrill issues, Dude.'

Sorry, but last night was Family Movie Night in our house and guess what we watched?

Bernita said...

I never met a case of alliteration I didn't like.