Sitting at the Y, trying to keep my head from spinning, writing, writing, writing. I finally got something resembling a full night’s sleep last night–maybe six hours, but I feel better. However, the cold is still with me, and it’s still kicking my ass hard. Every time I cough, my sides feel like they’re going to collapse into a black hole, and I have to pause for a few seconds as the spots before my eyes pass . . . just like right before I wrote this sentence.
I’m suppose to go out this afternoon and join in a celebration. Yes, I know it’s 5 May, and you’re probably thinking, “Time for Cinco de Mayo”. Right day, wrong celebration. For today is also, as it is sometimes called, Boys Day, and it’s a big deal in Japan.
There is a mini-festival at the college near where I live, and it’s Japanese, because 5 May is the end of Golden Week in Japan. And so, if I go, I’ll get a change to re-immerse myself into some Nihon culture–which is something I used to do quite a lot of twenty years back.
These days, not so much. I have way too many things ongoing, and getting out to local festivals usually isn’t involved.
Last night I finished the revised draft for Echoes. To be honest there wasn’t a lot to do, maybe 2,500 words in two parts. The penultimate part–no problem. I breezed through that with relative ease. The last part, however–oh, man.
I mean, I get emotional quite a lot. I rarely do when I’m writing, however. I’ve told people who ask me the one question that comes up when you tell them you write erotica–and you know what that question is, so no need to reiterate–that I don’t have time to be “affected” by my stories while I’m writing them. As has been pointed out, writing is hard work. For those of you who do, you know what I mean. For those who don’t, try it, and you’ll see that putting one word before another, and string those sentences together into something that makes a chapter, and having those chapters create something that doesn’t read like one hundred and fifty thousands words of Mad Libs, it’s one of the more difficult things in the world.
Or, as I’ve said, anyone can write, but it takes a writer for it all to make sense.
So I’m going through the last few paragraphs of the last part of Echoes, and I’m reading it, which is what I do when I’m editing . . . and I start crying. Just a tear or two at first, but by the time I’d finished with the soliloquy delivered by one character–a character that, by the way, everyone had heard of throughout the story, but had never put in an appearance–to one of my main characters . . . I had to remove my glasses and wipe my face dry. It was that bad.
I can only account what happened to the fact that I was channeling the feelings I’d had at the time when I’d wrote those words back in January. It was emotional for me then; it was emotional for me yesterday. I like to pride myself on not getting worked up when I’m writing and/or editing, that I can maintain a detached demeanor when I’m getting a story down, or getting it cleaned up.
Apparently I’m not always that strong.
So, one more on the slush pile. I’m torn about what to do with Echoes, because it really ties back to the characters in Transporting–in fact, I had to do a little retconing to have someone make mention of a small event from that novel–and if you read it, you might find yourself a little confused by events. Then again, when I started Echoes, I keep that fact in mind, and included mention of certain things that pop up in Transporting. So, who knows? Maybe it would be a good thing to get published, and perhaps generate interest in that great white whale of a three hundred thousand, three-novel series, that I have sitting on a hard drive.
That’s something to discuss tomorrow.
In the mean time, maybe I’ll take a day off from writing.
If the Muse will let me, that is.
