Having Written My A** Off

Below, an accounting from memory of my day on Saturday, May 16, 2009 — my first (official) day of writing my a** off, although it pretty much resembles my Saturday routine for most of the last 18 months.

• Alarm goes off at 6:45am. I do not appreciate this, although I am the one who set it last night. Spitefully, I hit the Snooze button once. Out of bed at 6:55.
• Usual morning routine. Bathroom, kitchen, back to bedroom (while water for tea is boiling) to pull on jeans, socks, and an overshirt. Make tea, get little breakfast-bar thing for light snack. Proceed upstairs to the office.
• Determined to stay offline for the better part of the day — I know I’ll need to check a couple of facts at some point (I even know what facts they are) — I think I ought to post to Running After My Hat a brief reminder about Write Your A** Off Day. I see my blog has attracted an especially bizarre sp*m comment overnight, though. So I do a real brief post about that instead (see, this is why busy people unplug their computers from the Internet), and then I close Firefox and toggle over into my word processor.
• Open Amarok, the audio-player software I use. My “current writing playlist” of Welsh and Celtic(ish) music is already selected, so I hit the Play button, tinker with the volume for a few seconds, and minimize the Amarok window.
• Open the fifth of five chapters — yes, the last of his chapters, though not of the book’s — about my 18th-century Welsh brewmaster, Emrys ap Rhys. I’ve been editing and revising and re-editing this chapter all week, accumulating bits and pieces of scenes and fragments of dialogue. It’s a critical chapter because without it, the arc of the main storyline (which take place in late 20th-century New Jersey and Pennsylvania) will seem arbitrary and random. It’s like… Put a man at the top of a hill, surrounded by trees, and if lightning hits him instead of the trees it will seem like stupid coincidence. But — ah! — put him in a steel firetower and things fall into place. This “Chapter X5: Wales, 1779” (I don’t yet know the real chapter number; these five chapters will be scattered throughout the main story) is the book’s steel firetower.
• Last night, before turning out the light, with pen in hand I’d re-read and tinkered with some of the chapter’s wording, and I’d appended a proposed first sentence of the next (and final) section. Making these changes and additions to the actual word-processing file propels me several pages further. (This is my usual method of working; I use the previous days’ work to kick-start my way into the current.)
• At 8:20ish, I feel about my legs and ankes the rapid thumpthumpthump of a little dog’s wriggling body. Sophie has begun her own Saturday in her own usual way: The Missus holds open the swinging gate which prevents Sophie’s entry into the kitchen and the stairway beyond, and Sophie bursts past and up, happy happy happy it’s a new day oh boy oh boy my favorite day and there’s the man and his ankles I’ve gotta let him know how wonderful my favorite day is…! (For the record, she behaves like this also on the days when The Missus goes upstairs before I do, and when I hold the gate open. Sophie’s an equal-opportunity wriggler.)
• I carry Sophie downstairs, put her on the far side of the now-closed gate, and make my second cup of tea while exchanging morning small talk with The Missus.
• “Make” “real” breakfast to go with second-cup of tea: two strawberry Pop-Tarts. (Not the frosted kind, bleah, ptui.) Carry it and tea back upstairs.
• Finish the first draft of Chapter X5’s final section. Interrupt a couple times to go online and check spelling of the names of some ancient Celtic-mythological figures, and a small detail about brewing beer which I was pretty sure was right, just needed to confirm.
• Around 11:45, the floor rumbles. I call over to The Missus — who has come upstairs to her own office, on the other side of the wall — to ask if it’s thundering. “Yes,” she says. “Is that the first time you heard it? Sophie’s going crazy downstairs.” I listen and I can hear it, through walls and a floor and a dozen yards of air, the ferocious yapping of a miniature terrier who knows that if you just bark long enough, thunderstorms eventually, always, turn tail and run. The Missus goes downstairs.
• Around noon, I save my work, close the word processor, and proceed downstairs for a lunch break. (Permitted by Write Your A** Off Day’s bylaws, paragraph 13, section (b)2.) Also will give The Missus some relief by taking over Sophie-attention duty for a little while. Much playing ensues.
• Return upstairs at around 12:45. Re-open word processor, re-open Chapter X5. Re-edit whole thing up to last section, then separately edit, revise, and generally rework that section for the first time.
• Print Chapter X5. While it’s printing, remember that I recently re-opened — in anticipation of turning to the book’s main storyline — this big old gray-plastic file bin I bought in 1992 or thereabouts, expressly for storing some (but not all) of my notes and research for this book. Swivel around in office chair and there it is, the gray box. Open it. Read the labels on the tabs (and remember, this book’s action takes place almost entirely in modern USA):
  • Beer/Ale
  • Castles (also Glastonbury, etc.)
  • Metals/Metalworking
  • Motor Homes
  • [Gospel of] St. Thomas
  • Tarot/Pinochle
  • Misc Notes/Background
• Turn back to desk. Re-read Chapter X5. I have this weird little thing I do with my writing: I gauge a fresh session’s work on the basis of a single sentence. If I can’t find at least once sentence I’m close to perfectly happy with, on more than one level, then I close the writing session feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. Here is today’s sentence (I don’t expect you to understand its background, of course; these five chapters are also written in a style and voice very different from the rest of the book):

• Done, roughly, at 2:20 pm.
• Open blogging dashboard to create postponed Wrote Your A** Off? post, linking to the page you’re reading right now.