WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 11th, 2009 - NEWPORT

A very good day. Crossed the 20,000 word mark tonight. About 5,000 words since this afternoon. Chapter 4 is done (and long!)

Turning off the internet was a really, really good idea. I publicly declared I was going to do it around 8 AM - still I found myself with pressing and undeniable reasons to be signing on again for about two hours after. Finally I called bullshit on myself and shut the damn thing off.

Immediately, I started a desperate search for other ways to procrastinate. I finished Ursula K. Leguin's magnificent (and melancholy) science fiction novel "The Left Hand of Darkness" (I had read another of Leguin's science fiction novels, "The Eye of the Heron" last month, and it has had a profound effect on the novel I'm writing). I started watching Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen - a film so enraptured in it's own gossamer-glossy eye candy that it is almost visually incomprehensible - but paused it after an hour because I was gagging on the inanity.

Still avoiding the novel, I started work on two short stories "Dr. Plugenart and the Monkeys" about a mad scientist in a jungle who is vexed by a tribe of (possibly super-intelligent) monkeys, and "Owl, Hummingbird, and Butterlfy Versus Two Porcupines" which is exactly what it sounds like. It's nice to have side-projects, especially absurdly comical ones to balance out the more serious writing. And I went for a walk or two on the beach.

All of these were a slippery slope back to writing the novel, however - whether reading or watching science fiction, writing something other than the novel or being out in nature, the true purpose of my stay here could not be blotted out without the torpid lullabies of the internet. So around 2 PM I pushed passed the blocks and got to work.

So far so good.

Incidentally, I have come to the conclusion that 50 degree weather isn't really "cold" so much as "cool". "The Left Hand of Darkness" has three long chapters devoted to two characters crossing a glacier on an ice planet in winter, in consistently sub-zero temperatures. After reading that, the 50 degree beach outside seemed positively balmy by contrast. Besides, I've lived through New York Winters, I should be hardier than this. LA is comfortable it is true ... but I wonder if LA hasn't made me lazy and fat, and only these last few months of intensive fasting and visits to colder climates have put my life back on track...

Now, joy of joys, I shall retire from my computer and finish watching Transformers 2...



Total word count: 21,223
Words to be written: 28,777