Word

Still suffering from an attack of the so-what-does-it-all-matter-anyways, which has spread to all aspects of my life.

Last week, for what might have been the first time ever, I spent 45 minutes a day working on a (silly chick-lit) novel I started years ago. Friday and yesterday I started thinking about (seemingly) insurmountable problems in the novel (or should I say chapter, because that's really all it is at this point). I thought about how many problems there are to solve in it, and what a waste of time all that problem-solving will be if I can't figure out what happens after the first couple of chapters. And anyway, even if I finish it will probably be a shitty chicklit novel that no one will publish, and even if someone does publish it probably it will have about 10 readers, maybe nine, since my grandmother is no longer around to buy one. And it won't be a big enough deal to review but if someone did...

I've very nearly talked myself out of bothering. And writing a novel has been something I have been talking about doing all my life.

And I know at least as well as anybody that writing does not happen until you put words down on paper. One after another. It is something I rue on evenings when I expect to be up all night writing articles – that unlike so many other jobs mine is not one that can be over when the clock strikes a certain time. And the half-doing my job only results in having to do it again and again until an editor says I've got it right.

Sometimes – usually – I write a whole lot of (crummy) stuff that (somewhat mournfully) I delete after I figure out what the hell it is I'm really trying to say. (The mourning, in my case, is not for the stunning prose but rather for how many hours went down the drain with each sentence I highlight and then apply the left-pointing arrow to.)

But I have no choice but to put one word down and then another and hopefully another. Minute by minute. Sentence by sentence. Step by step.

Meal by meal.

Day 11.