I want to write. But although I will probably have a novel and a notebook near at hand, I will resist the temptation to bring my laptop along. I call it research (you never when a character might need to know what a down marker is), in addition to some quality time with my family. There aren't many things we do as a group, but last year my mother convinved us kids to watch the game with her (we'd already ended up watching the Sugarbowl that year, almost by chance, when the UH Warrioirs lost absymally), and lately we've taken to watching Psych all on Friday nights. Well, I watch Monk with her, and we make her suffer through Psych--she claims she doesn't get it. I think the pop culture and the style of humor of Psych are lost on her, but she likes Monk's quirky obsessive-compulsiveness.
Anyway, I suppose this post is about taking a break. I've been steeped in this story for weeks, if not months, and deadlines are fast approaching so I've been feeling the pressure to complete the fiorst draft so I can jump into revisions. But that's how we can get burned out. And by 'we' I think this refers to both writers and students. For me, I was starting to get tired of loking at my computer, and the busy-ness of a new semester made it easy to step away from it. But I couldn't drop it for long because, despite the hundreds of lines of translation I've already done, there is a lot I need to accomplish before March 13.
I am getting obsessed with March 13. So in a weekend surrounded by this novel, which I am luckily starting to like again after a few days of being sick of it completely, tomorrow I am taking a break and I will not begrudge myself the time away from it. Ideas may come to me, and I'll be there, accepting of them, but I will try not to fill my thoughts with working out niggling little problems with the plot.
Tomorrow I rest. And watch the Superbowl. And eat far more junkfood than is really necessary. But I will have fun, and maybe tomorrow evening I will turn on my laptop, chck my email, and slip into the writing as if all of it was fresh and new and exciting. because it's still exciting, just a little quieter than those first few paragraphs.
Cardinals versus Steelers, tomorrow will be interesting.
(On an unrelated note: I didn't find out until it was far too late to do anything about it, but Duff and the crew from Ace of Cakes was here, on Schofield Barracks--Thursday, I believe--and I didn't get to go see them. Alas. I enjoy that show.)
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