December 1, 2009 I'll be calling in sick

Dan just left. He was bummed to be leaving on this beautiful Saturday to spend the day at some dark bar in Portland, ME with a bunch of guys for his fantasy football draft/man date. (Note to self: make fun of Dan's fantasy sports league in future post.) Tomorrow night he's heading to Fenway to watch the Yankees/Red Sox game with his brother and sister.

Though excited for the game, he feels bad about being gone most of the weekend.

I (and you'll forgive me, bud) feel great about it.

Two days to myself? Two?

He's been gone twenty minutes and I am on the couch, blogging on my laptop, listening to Barbra at full-blast (Dan always makes me turn the radio down, prompting me to sing "Ol' Man Lederer, that Ol' Man Lederer"), watching a muted Little League World Series and eating a clementine. If it thunderstorms as the forecast says it will (and as it suddenly looks---and now sounds---like it might), it would be my wet dream. (The Little League World Series is one of my favorite summer events. Today's game is Canada versus Mexico and I don't know who to root for; I feel so stuck in the middle.)

He laughed when I told him not to worry about me. I think the word I used to describe my feelings on the matter was "elated." He knows I need a little alone time. Writing is such a solitary thing by nature, but it's work. I feel like I'm asking for more than my share of quiet time when I then want to take a bath or read a book, but those are two totally different types of alone. Dan gets it and is mostly respectful even though it's something I didn't admit to needing---maybe didn't know I needed---until after we were married. (And he's certainly more respectful of my alone time than than I am about his need to wind down some days with a little TV...especially when I'm feeling chatty or playful.)

(I just ran out to get the mail and literally missed the pouring rain by 30 seconds. Here comes the wind and the rumblings of thunder...Bring it!)

Though I've been reaching for more and more alone time lately for writing, few couples I know do together as well Dan and I do. We just spent four weeks without leaving each other's side for more than a couple of hours and I only wanted to murder him a handful of times. (I'm sure that number is bigger for him.)

(And the lightening and roaring thunder begins! It's coming down so hard I can barely see through the sheets of rain rolling down the windows' glass. My living room is dark except for a small table lamp and the light of my computer screen and TV. More lightening and thunder. I LOVE a summer rain.)

Last night we did the Friday night movie thing and saw Julie and Julia. It's a cooking movie:

Start with a base of Nora Ephron (whom I want to be when I grow up).

Add in the adorable Amy Adams (she's like a friggin' kitten), who plays Julie Powell, a thirty-year-old woman who is feeling lost and unaccomplished so she starts a blog and in doing so "becomes" the writer she always wanted to be.

Sprinkle in a generous and delicious portion of Meryl Streep. (I worship her so fiercely that I would like to wrap my arms around her waist and never let go, just dragging around with her everywhere she went forever and ever.)

Did I mention Amy Adams is a red-head?

Think I liked it?

I believe I may have mentioned something about a wet dream earlier in this post.

It was one of those movies that gives you that feeling. I know you're with me. When it's good, it's something like hurt that seems to inhabit you as you walk from the magic-infused darkness of a movie theater. When it's good, watching movies (reading books, listening to music) is like falling in love. All of a sudden you're inspired to try things, to be someone; the world looks different, more full of possibility; you're envisioning all the exciting scenarios that could be. (And then someone scream, "Stop following me!")

Anyway, that's what Julie and Julia did for me. Admittedly, I am a total sucker for a chick flick. I feel something close to this as soon as I see Bette Midler's name in the beginning credits. But Dan loved it too so it's not just my gender or the fact that it was the day before my period.

(And now it's sunny and gorgeous out again.)

As I wrote to GBFF extraordinaire Mattie (who texted me last week to say I had to see this "Laura Mellow movie"): "A more perfect movie for this moment in life, I couldn't imagine." When Julie (Adams)said that the reason she's never been able to finish anything in her life is because she has ADD, a laugh burst through my lips so loud and hard (in the silent theater) that I worried I might offend someone.

Besides the obvious, there were a few other themes to which I related. Both Julia Child and Julie Powell were women who were looking for someone to be, something to do. And, as noted by Julie, both were women who had these good, kind, supportive husbands. There is also this business about deadlines. (Julie's blog is born from the deadline she gives herself to cook every recipe from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year while documenting the process.) I relate to the idea of deadlines.

I've set many a deadline in my day. I've crossed very few. It's why (besides not having a nose for news) I could never seriously pursue journalism. There's a deadline cemetery somewhere in my brain, I'm sure.

This has not served me well.

I have avoided deadlines with my creative work deliberately, thinking that it would suffocate me or the work. While I know this was a wise choice as I worked to cultivate kindness and patience with myself when it came to writing (I can be harsh and this has halted progress on zillions of projects), it's time to step it up. I can handle it now. Maybe.

So, though it's terrifying to do so (and I've talked myself out of it already a couple of times), I am going to publicly (to my 14-person "public") declare a deadline. Here fucking goes:

By December 1---three months from the start of September---I will have completed a rough draft of, well, a book.

I'm not going to get into details now (the gut is telling me to hold back as things develop), but I've been working on something sort of on and off for a bit now. It is nothing close to book-y at this point. It is a few random sets of pages of spazzy thought, scattered in journals and Microsoft word files and legal pads around the spoffice (spare bedroom + office). It is not organized, there is no outline and I'm still not sure exactly what it's about (which is why I am not going into details yet). Nonetheless, I will have a rough draft of something by December 1. (Who wants to bet November 30th will be a late night?)

(Raining again.)

I have no idea if three months is a reasonable time to accomplish such a feat but I'd hang myself if the rope was any longer. (Can I use that expression in this context? I mean it sort of makes sense but I feel like it pertains to freedom and not time. Anyway, Dan recommended a year but I wouldn't be able to do anything---not even make my bed--- if you gave me a whole year to fuck around with. I'm not grown up enough for long-term goals, we've established this. Plus, it's just a rough draft; it would be okay if it really sucked. (Though this would not be my preference.)

"For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, “Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?,” you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go – but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages." -Anne Lamott from "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

So, off we go. My plan is to check in here at least once a week (maybe Fridays?) for a little book update. Think of yourselves as my editor. This will be nothing like that time a while back when I told you I was going to blog from London the whole time and then only posted four times. Updating my status here will keep me on track. Though (and this is the second time Mr. Carroll's class has come up in this blog)I didn't meet even one check-in deadline during the year-long process of writing my 11th grade research paper. The final paper, handed in late---on the last possible day it could even be accepted, in fact---garnered an "F" with a note in red pen that it was "a potentially excellent paper." (GBFFE turned it in the next year without changing a thing and got a "C" as well as some suspicious looks from his teacher.)

So, a little book progress blog segment will start this week. I'll have to come up with a catchy name. (Oh shizzle, maybe this is going to become a blog about writing a book! And then then it will be a made into a movie and I will write a blog about that! It will be a blog about making a movie based on a blog about writing a book.)

So it's out there. This is what I'm doing. No backing down now. The only problem is---what if I lie? I promise I won't. Maybe I'll take pictures along the way. (Here's me crying at the computer. Here's me asleep on my spoffice floor. Here's a big stack of paper that looks something like a manuscript but really I spent these past three months transcribing episodes of The Facts of Life.)

Something will be made, that's for sure. This is one deadline that will be met (probably). It should be noted that during my stint as a reporter for a newspaper(and for every other job I've ever had), I never missed a deadline (or showed up late for that matter). I only come up short when I'm doing something that would benefit me in regards to my hopes and dreams, you see?

Pretty soon I'll be able to say, "I'm working on my book." (And, quite possibly, I'll be saying this for the rest of my life.) Time to get crackin'.

But not today. I'm tiiiiiired. Don't give me that look, this blog doesn't write itself (asshole). I've got the place to myself and have been planning for days to spend the time moving from the couch to the bed to the bath (if the rain sticks around) or the park (if it doesn't) reading Joyce Maynard's just-released novel, Labor Day. This book came into my possession by way of certain good, kind, supportive husband of my own who showed up with it even though I never said out that I wanted it. (I have been anticipating its release for months but was trying to tame some of my junky book-buying habits.) He just knew.

I kinda miss that guy.

Mexico won. It's still raining. I have a feeling the next few months are going to be a mix of sunny calm and thunderous crazy. Perfect timing, I needed something to do.