"Talks Over Tea" by Kichigai
Yesterday was a full day, a very girlie day. I caught up with my friend Gris for tea, which is always fun, considering I’m not a very girlie girl. Really love those little sandwiches. I could eat a baking sheet piled up high with them. But it wouldn’t be very ladylike. Instead, I restrained myself to what was on my plate and held my pinkie high and proper when I drank my tea.
There’s a lot to be said about restraint, I’m discovering, especially when it comes to trimming your own bangs or reacting to a family member’s heated, emotional outburst. This is really nothing new to anyone, I’m sure. Actually, it seems to be a lesson that I find myself having to learn over and over again. But I’m proud to report that this time around, I’m not afraid to show my bangs in public, and I didn’t make a family issue worse. Yay me!
As for tea sandwiches, I’m still unconvinced that restraint is the way to go. They need to put the goodies out in man portions!
Later on, I met with another friend and we had a nice dinner, then off to a local coffee house to try to get work done…me with my writing, and her with her college studies. Unfortunately, coffee houses just don’t stay late enough for nocturnal folk like ourselves, and so I found myself with a measly 157 words before it was time to wrap up. Then we gabbed at my house until my husband came home from working at the bar, around 2:20 a.m. Yeeks!
This is why I didn’t blog last night. I was ashamed. I sorry.
Therefore, I vowed to prove my worthiness today by writing 3,000 words; 1,000 for yesterday, 1,000 for today, and another 1,500 just to get me closer to my month-end goal of 31k. And I’m proud to say I managed 3,352. Yay! This public posting of goals really helps, I gotta say.
Which reminds me, Leo Babauta has an excellent post up at Zen Habits about motivation, including tips such as positive public pressure and pacing. Still working on the pacing bit. I tend to work in spurts and buckets. But even still, this new approach of writing about 1,000 words a day seems to help as it always leaves me knowing where to pick up the next day. And in a very short span, I’ve got a 30-plus page story. Revisions will hopefully pare it down to a more marketable length, but it still smells like accomplishment to me.
Tomorrow or the next day, I will be able to type “The End” to the current story. I’m really enjoying writing this one. Nothing like a monster-in-the-backyard story to make you afraid to go outside at night. I’m really looking forward to writing the next story in the queue though. Love, love, love magic realism, and I haven’t written one of those in a while.
Ah, well. To all the writers out there, may your daily word counts overrunneth your cuppeths.
Until tomorrow, nighty-night.