Reay Jespersen

In light of my recent shift of approach to writing, Jackie suggested - and not for the first time - that along with writing at other times, I deidcate one night a week to it. Wednesday was the day she recommended, typically being a rather uneventful night and being the last day of the week when I have a pretty good idea of when I’ll be getting home from work.

Sadly, this was an unusually busy night, so while I left work on time, after making one stop for food shopping and another for seeing a friend we’d been meaning to see for some time, we only got home at 7:30. Tack on dinner prep, eating, and catching a few scant extra minutes of the second period of the Leaf game - interesting team they’ve cobbled together… be watching to see how they do this year - and I was only sitting down to start writing at 8:30. Hardly the “night of writing” it was supposed to be.

Still, by 10:00, I’d done a notch over 1900 words on a kids’ story which I think has a solid idea behind it but whose execution isn’t really doing much for me. I’ll keep pushing on it and try to finish it regardless of how brutal a first draft it may end up being, however, because if I keep trying to get a new start to it I’m happier with, I may never make any real progress in it. I’ve realized recently, apparently a quality Jackie had long-since identified, that I don’t like lack of progress in my work (and the more I think about it, in other aspects of my life, as well). Hence, I figure my re-hashing the opening to this story, potentially again and again, will only get me more frustrated/less interested in it than forging ahead and finishing it would, even if it results in a far from perfect first draft. Rough aspects can always be worked out in re-writes, after all.

For now, off to sleep in pursuit of another aspiration of mine: getting a decent amount of sleep during the week. So crazy an option to my often being tired and looking like hell that it just might work!

Talk soon.