Trouble ahead
May. 29th, 2003 07:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraOverlapping hierarchies of anxieties. First and foremost should be finances, but that has somehow been demoted to Second-Order Worry, and I'm not sure whether that's denial on my part or some other species of delusion. Two weeks since I paid bills. When I finally force myself to go through the contents of the wicker basket next to my desk, receivables will add up to more than I have in my checking account. There are cash reserves but dipping into them at this point will seriously hamper my ability to start a business venture. Had a nursing dream last night – some horrible misdeed in the hospital and then when I got home, I realized I had totally forgotten to chart anything on my patients. The phone was ringing, and I knew when I picked it up it would be the nursing supervisor in an icy, vindictive fury.
Then there's the whole substrate of personal relationships – Ben and I, companionable enough on the day-to-day but that day-to-day exists on the tacit assumption that it's me carrying the support load. Meanwhile, he goes about his business – spending six hours reading the CNN and the New York Times web site, cruising over to Scott's Valley to look for RVs for his mother, the make-believe bookstore job. When I bring up the money crisis, he immediately says in a clipped voice, "Well, then, we should move –" his assumption here (the correct one) that California is economically depressed, that I should have no problem finding shackles to fit me elsewhere. And I look at him out of the sides of my eyes, I think, "Who's this we you're talking about?" But I don't say anything.
But first and foremost in my mind is the writing. Spent three whole days in the Zone, the glib place where the words pour out so easily that it almost seems as though you're plagiarizing from a published version of your story that exists in some parallel universe. Hatcher's backstory. Then I realized I hadn't planted it on the time line with the earlier hooker-gunned-down-in-Costco scene. The few events are mostly markers for Hatcher to spin out into complicated thoughts about race – they take place the day before the shoot-out. And what I wrote is so seamless and tight that it's very hard to retrofit the chronology. And while I was biking yesterday I realized that even if I can keep up this writing pace of 1000 words a day, it's going to take me five months to finish the damn novel. With no guarantees that I can publish it, let alone make any money off it. So is writing just another form of denial about worrisome pragmatics?
Then there's the whole substrate of personal relationships – Ben and I, companionable enough on the day-to-day but that day-to-day exists on the tacit assumption that it's me carrying the support load. Meanwhile, he goes about his business – spending six hours reading the CNN and the New York Times web site, cruising over to Scott's Valley to look for RVs for his mother, the make-believe bookstore job. When I bring up the money crisis, he immediately says in a clipped voice, "Well, then, we should move –" his assumption here (the correct one) that California is economically depressed, that I should have no problem finding shackles to fit me elsewhere. And I look at him out of the sides of my eyes, I think, "Who's this we you're talking about?" But I don't say anything.
But first and foremost in my mind is the writing. Spent three whole days in the Zone, the glib place where the words pour out so easily that it almost seems as though you're plagiarizing from a published version of your story that exists in some parallel universe. Hatcher's backstory. Then I realized I hadn't planted it on the time line with the earlier hooker-gunned-down-in-Costco scene. The few events are mostly markers for Hatcher to spin out into complicated thoughts about race – they take place the day before the shoot-out. And what I wrote is so seamless and tight that it's very hard to retrofit the chronology. And while I was biking yesterday I realized that even if I can keep up this writing pace of 1000 words a day, it's going to take me five months to finish the damn novel. With no guarantees that I can publish it, let alone make any money off it. So is writing just another form of denial about worrisome pragmatics?
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-30 08:49 pm (UTC)Still in the Zone?
Date: 2003-06-07 02:53 pm (UTC)