muchtooarrogant | LJ Idol, Week Three, The Bye

I don't write fast. Instead, I get an idea, play with it in my head until I have a reasonably clear outline of where it starts and finishes, decide on the truly crucial scenes and bits of dialogue I want to include, and then, finally, begin writing.

Of course, even once I start scribbling, it's a slow and intricate process, full of rewrites and reversals, lighthearted insertions and radical deletions, a frightening mélange of words I'm desperately trying to wrangle into some semblance of order. I know, it doesn't sound relaxing at all, but for some reason it is.

When I gave NaNoWriMo a shot in 2009, it was pure torture for me. The premise seemed simple enough, just write. Whatever spewed forth from my fingers, keep it and go on. Continuity? Unimportant. Spelling, grammar, and word choice? Meaningless abstractions. The only thing which really mattered was word count, and if by the end of the month I hadn't written an average of 1,666.666667 words a day, I failed.

Somewhere around week one of the ordeal, I confessed to Lizbeth, "I'm not doing it right you know. I keep going back, changing words, playing with the sentences until they're the way I want them to sound."

And yet, even though I persisted in doing it wrong, even though I was constantly having to travel for work, and even though I got sick for a few days, I still somehow managed to write a total of 40,000 plus words by the end of November. I called it torture, and in some ways it was, but it was also one of the happiest and most freeing writing experiences I've ever had.

Now, I'm competing in LJ Idol, and so far it's been lots of fun. It's completely different from NaNoWriMo, aside from the fact that there is still an eventual deadline. It's sneaky, because you actually have several days to think up, write down, and post your topic, and time can really get away from you if you're not careful. That's what happened to me this past weekend. I knew I had to travel for work starting on Sunday, and so decided to spend a wonderfully luxurious weekend with Lizbeth and the girlitas relaxing. Several times I thought, "I should spend some time writing my entry," but it never happened.

Until Monday evening. I had what I considered to be a good idea, and basically knew how the story should unfold. What I didn't have, unfortunately, was enough time to write it all down.

"One large Hawaiian, and one large sausage, onion, and green pepper," said the delivery boy, handing over both boxes.

"Here ya go," I responded, and passed him two twenties. "Just keep the change."

"Thanks!" he said, grinning up at me from behind improbably long blond bangs. "Tell Erin I said hi."

Before I could answer, he spun, and dashed back towards his car. Either the local Pizza Hut had a delivery schedule with tougher deadlines than UPS and Fedex combined, or the kid was scared he might actually see my daughter. Shrugging, I closed the front door on the mystery, and headed back inside.

"Pizza's here," I yelled towards the house's main hallway, and turned towards the kitchen.

"Can we eat up here?" was Erin's barely audible response.

I sighed. After packing and carrying boxes from upstairs all morning, a pizza picnic in the attic hadn't exactly been in my plans. Still, all things considered, the kid had been remarkably understanding about the curve ball her mother and I had recently thrown into her life. Could I begrudge her any one-on-one father-daughter time, regardless of where she wanted to spend it?

"I'll be right there," I said, turning back towards the hallway, and bracing my back for the climb to come.

We'd inherited the old beast of a house years ago, when my in-laws decided that they'd prefer to while away their retirement by living in an RV, crisscrossing the United States with their like-minded cronies, occasionally dropping in for unannounced, but blessedly short, visits. It was huge, far more house in fact than any three person family could reasonably be expected to fully occupy, as well as murderously expensive to heat and cool. The rambling expanse of rooms was all on one level, except of course for the attic, accessed by a pull-down ladder from the house's central hallway.

Fortunately, LJ Idol contestants are given two Bye's, a "get out of writing free card," if you will. Now that I have but one left, I must be extra vigilant of the onrushing LJ Idol deadlines, as well as cognizant of my own shortcomings where writing is concerned. Time, what I need is time!

Dan