The SoCal Exile Daily Journal: Day 1
Words are complicated. Back in the old days, I used to know if I'd
accomplished something by my word count. I'd say: I'm going to write
2000 words today and then I'm going to eat a club sandwich and have
several Arnold Palmers. And I'd know that I was being productive,
because the 2000 words were there, sitting tangibly on my (very
expensive) computer screen. This made it easier to enjoy my club
sandwich.
But the re-write isn't all charging club sandwiches and Arnold
Palmers to your father and asking if you can borrow his car for
several hours to "run errands" by the outlets in Carlsbad. The word
counts go up and down in an unpredictable fashion. Yesterday I
deleted 46 pages of crap and rewrote 18. I have now connected the
entire middle of my book to the end so that it no longer seems like I
spent the middle chapters writing a (hilarious?) short story about
the mall that had nothing to do with the rest of my work. But like
the temperatures in my home state, my word count is low. I need to
get over this, friends, and it starts by ignoring the word count. And
maybe writing more?
My Father-Son Relationship Quote of the Day: "So when you finished
that jar of pickles did it even cross your mind 'hey maybe I should
go the store and replace them'?"
Today I am attempting to clean up those middle chapters I just re-
wrote and plow through the back end of the book, editing with a
passion and fury unseen in SoCal. I will keep you so up in the loop
that you'll feel like you are writing this book and I'm just sitting
in the hot tub text messaging emoticons.
I'm also going to need to get some pickles.
Let's do this again tomorrow.
Oh, also: Song sign offs this week are exclusively coming from the
year 1998. Mostly because that was a great year for network
television. ( Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place, we hardly knew ye)
