Grocery shopping with Van Gogh

I'm noticing an increase in the amount of "What are you doing these days?" inquiries, so I think it's time to hop back onto the ol' Blogger and bring you up to date with my book progress.

Things are going well. I'm splitting my time between working on the book and some family business stuff, so I'm not writing every day, but I'm writing consistently. Every week I'm able to get around 3,000 to 4,000 words written which is a moderate success. I'm at about 54,000 right now which, according to the length of your average historical narrative, is about halfway. It's difficult to measure these things, though, because it's a rough draft. The story could end up being much longer - because I have a mountain of research to draw from - or much shorter - because an editor just crossed out that mountain of research and more.

My biggest realization from my last post (has it been almost two months already?) is that I'm feeling this weird disconnection from the story. It doesn't feel like it's mine or that I belong to it. In other words, I don't feel like I'm in it yet. When I sit down in the mornings to write I am able to get into a flow, but I don't feel that the words I'm scratching onto the page are genuinely mine. It's just a story and I happen to be the one writing it. It's kind of like going grocery shopping, I suppose. I know what to buy and how to efficiently do it (unless it's Safeway . . . I'll crisscross the length of that store five times to find three items), but it's a task that's impersonal that I can't leave any lasting legacy on.

But I'm not feeling too bad about that. A few posts ago I told you about a book called Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, which said that a writer needs to get all his ideas, including all the crappy ones, down on paper for the first draft. After that, the real work of reshaping and stamping the writer's personality on the story can begin. It's like one of those painting nights (the kind with wine!) where you look at a painting and try to replicate it on your own canvas. The first step is to get down the first layer of color (the sky, for instance), and so you splatter blue paint all over the thing. It looks ugly and impossible that it will ever become "The Starry Night," but it becomes the foundation that leads to the rest of the painting and the personal touches of the artist. So I'm hopeful and anticipating work on my second, third, and subsequent drafts, and that I'll be more connected to the story then.

Otherwise, Ah Toy and I are doing fairly well. She may have raised an eyebrow or two at what I've had her do or the dialog I've made her say, but I'm hoping she'll withhold judgement until I get to the later drafts of her story. She seems patient so far, and I'm grateful to those of you who are too!