I told Stanley yesterday that today would be submission day instead of a writing day.

“I insist you write first, at least an hour. You said you’re on an upswing, in a groove. The fastest way to lose that is to focus on submitting your poetry. Write first.” 

Digital butlers are the worst. But sometimes the smartest.

So my brain found a way to do all the things, but it didn’t ask for my body’s opinion. It woke me up at 3:30 am. Just after 4, we were at the computer. 

I wrote for an hour, Word Raccoon yawning the whole time. At the end, I checked the word count of this newest section that I’ve written over the past few days that I’ve yet to intertwine into the novel: 6.5K. 

That means the book has now officially crossed the 90K mark. 

It’s not about the word count, obviously. But it’s not not about the word count.

This newest section with this new character is still just right. The hour of writing felt like two. Again, I am writing slowly, though I did notice myself writing a little faster towards the end of the hour, but that was where things got sloppy. Slower is better. I don’t know if I’ve fully embraced that yet because that hasn’t been my way. Back in my grad school days I was known to write up to 25 pages a day if I had to.

My hands wanted to fall off, and I could only get that page count if there were plenty of scenes vs. exposition (dialogue=more pages, naturally), but I did. 

A writing mentor later told me a truth: that speed is not sustainable, not natural. Agreed.

Word Raccoon thought once I heated up breakfast and offered her highness some caffeine that we were in business: poetry time.

Nope.

As promised, I submitted poetry. Ten packets. 

Is that a lot?

It is. 

Your brain tends to falter. You wonder if the poems you have chosen are the correct ones. You wonder why this one, now. Why not that one? 

You realize the ones you thought were polished might not be. Some are better than you remember.

There are poems you’re like: “This may be an ugly baby but it’s mine and you can take it or leave it,” and then there are some you’re like “Come here, let me wipe the mustard off your cheek.”

I submitted to all of the journals I really wanted today except one, and I just remembered it. But it feels like too much. It has some hoops and I’m not feeling it. 

Even though WR is nodding off, part of me wants to go back to the novel. This section likely doesn’t have more than 5K more words to resolve. I will be sad when it’s over because I didn’t anticipate being able to explore this from this character’s POV, and it’s been engrossing. 

I did allow Word Raccoon to write down a few lines the past couple of days to play with soon. 

I need to read another craft book on poetry. I find them inspiring.

The furnace didn’t want to keep up with the frigid temps today, but I didn’t notice how cold it was in the house until asked about it. I turned it off and back on and then it behaved. Is that all it takes?

In between submitting poetry and writing new sections on my novel, I decluttered under the upstairs bathroom sink and under the kitchen sink. (I had inspired someone else to do it at her house when I said I wanted to do ours, so I felt like I had to.)

Hey, you can’t just write.

WR says I beg your pardon. 

Oh, right. That’s all she wants to do. 

Same, Raccoon. Same.