Man, there is never enough time to do anything! The sun was setting yesterday before I had gotten to a point where I was ready to do homework–and even after two straight hours yesterday, I still had another four hours tonight (I HATE doing homework on Sunday, I wish I didn’t have to do it) and even then, not all of it is done! But, on a good note, I actually had fun writing a paper about Palestine-Israel, and that was encouraging. I would hate to go into a career where I hated the everyday work I had to do, so this is a sign to me that I wasn’t dead wrong to choose a major that required a lot of essay writing.
Yesterday we had an excellent Quark writing meeting! We have a new core group of freshmen coming out each week, which is really, really good because they will probably help keep the group alive after all the old timers get married and move away. I had the guys give me feedback on the part in my novel where Ian has the nuclear attack flashback. It was really interesting because even though the text was inconsistent, needed some rewriting and rearranging, and didn’t seem very well thought through in some ways, the general consensus was that everyone really liked it. For me, as the writer, it was kind of embarrassing to realize that I’d made some stupid mistakes and overlooked things in such a big way to have so many inconsistencies, but it was really good that people liked the scene in general. That night, even though I had no time (of course!), I said to myself “well, I have a goal to at least write SOMETHING every day, so I’d better revise this section,” and to my surprise, it wasn’t that hard. Did it while watching the Hawaii vs. Washington State game at my friends’ house (what a great game!). So, I guess what I took from that was that even if something in your writing sucks, there can still be stuff about it that makes it good. It was good for me to realize that on a gut level, especially since I’m probably going to get more self-conscious the deeper I get into this novel.
Tonight I went back to my friends’ house and wrote about 517 words, from around one thirty to two thirty in the morning. It was the only major break from homework that I really had–and now, I’m going to bed. I’m not stupid. In fact, I read a study on sleeping habits just yesterday, and it really scared me. It says that the mortality rate of people who consistently get less than six hours of sleep is significantly higher than that of people who get seven to eight hours, which is the optimum amount (it also says that the risk is just as high for those who get more than eight hours, but I don’t have that problem). Fortunately–and this is VERY fortunately–it says that if you manage to make up the sleep another night, the risk goes away. So, I’ll probably be sleeping in on Tuesday, much as I hate sleeping in.
But as far as writing goes, it’s going very well…when I have the time! But even though I never have the time to get as deep into the story as I would like, I somehow (and I have no idea how I manage to do this) have been finding the time to write consistently just about every day.
I can’t wait until the break! I will make a TON of progress when I’m no longer hampered by school!
