MONDAY NOVEMBER 2nd, PASADENA

"MINUTIAE AND SPACE"


I did not reach my 4000 word goal tonight. I stopped at 3554, just past the traditional NaNo daily quota of 1700. I've set my personal daily quota at 2000 because I'm losing at least two days to travel (Berkeley to Newport: 10 hours, and vice versa) and I'm flying to Australia at 11 PM on the evening of the 29th - I want to leave myself the option of NOT finishing on the plane.

Today was one of those days when there were just a million things to take care of - you know what it's like just before a 3 week trip - you find yourself re-negotiating and managing your whole life. Last minute hostel reservations, dinner and coffee dates, and (in my case) writing meetings, supplies, groceries, packing, one last visit to the gym, and then all the stuff you're leaving behind - emails, projects, deadlines, scanning and sending, film festival applications, putting together a quick film showcase reel for Colleen as a favor, etc ... not to mention burning books-on-tape, printing a thick wad of mapquest directions, gathering books and maps...

But all that aside, by mid-afternoon I realized I was seriously procrastinating. There is (not surprisingly) a small, frozen terrified part of me whose agenda is as follows: do not go through with this. and the longer this novel-writing goes on, the more pressure there will be to keep it going.

As the sky was beginning to turn orange, I set myself up on the back patio and started allowing new words to matriculate into the manuscript. At the end of the day, I believe all you can guarantee yourself is the space to write. Writing takes time, it is true, but Einstein postulated that space-time is a single inseparable continuum, and I think writing also needs space. And the space has to be revered - it has to be impregnable, in a sense, immune to minutiae & other people's agendas - but still dynamic, pliable, open to inspiration. In a sense, the space has to be "sacred."

The whole story turned very conversational all of a sudden. Tamreh touched the alien tech (big taboo) and Anka freaked out. Then they shared a quasi-lesbian moment that I found confusing.

Now I have to go finish that reel for Colleen and also the film festival application for Autodoc to SXSW - those were the things I put off when I stopped procrastinating.

Writing in my parent's house is hard! (I just moved my stuff here from my Hollywood apartment, since I'll be traveling for the rest of the year, and with a little luck, on into January).

Thank God I'm finally hitting the road tomorrow...


TOTAL WORD COUNT: 3554

Words to be written: 46,446