My favorite passage from today’s work:

• He lowered the paper to examine the details of the place, but found that the restaurant had vanished and been replaced with his crummy apartment again.  Even the heavenly garlic bread smell had been replaced with the unmistakable aroma of “please take out the garbage.”  Frowning, he wound the paper back into the typewriter, and the smell hit him again.  His aunt Martina used to make garlic bread that smelled like that, and it always made him think of summer nights in the rolling hills of Salerno, except for the fact that he’d never left the United States and his aunt Martina was as Italian as Honey Boo-Boo.

So, it will bear editing, of course, but it makes me smile.  Also, I formatted that on the fly, and the look of it pains me, but I’m in a serious-ANTZ can’t-be-bothered mood as far as my writing goes today.  I’m getting some sweet Word Count in; ain’t nobody got time for all that flowery make-it-easier-on-the-reader Sharknado.

Except for you, reader.  You’re awesome.

The weekend is never long enough, but this weekend was a good one.  Lots of family, lots of cleaning, the culmination (and pretty fantastic reception) of a big work project, and I even got some extracurricular writing done.  Really happy with this week’s Flash Fiction, and really pleased with today’s writing.

I got 1639 words done today, which is pretty impressive, considering how badly I was struggling to get my wheels turning.  Luckily, for today at least, once I was able to break the wheels out of the ice, it was smooth sailing.  But I’m learning some tricks to keep from getting stuck.

The trick of the day is Comments.  I am growing to love using Comments when I write.  Past Me would, when having difficulty with a passage or a phrase or any other sort of roadblock, sit and stew in front of the screen until he could come up with something at least passable to use to surmount the problem.  It was frustrating, slow, and perhaps more than anything, made me feel inept and uncreative and ill-suited to even be writing.  In other words, I’d get hung up on some insignificant detail and after a few minutes, my inability to come up with a good peripheral character name or clever made-up song title would balloon into WHY ARE YOU EVEN BOTHERING YOU’RE AN IDIOT YOU CAN’T DO THIS JUST EAT A CUPCAKE AND FORGET THE WHOLE THING.  Eating cupcakes is easy and that voice in my head was loud, so there you have it.  (I wonder why that voice of inner doubt is always shouting.  Probably mommy issues.)

Present Me, on the other hand, hits a roadblock then powers up his PNEUMATIC JUMPING CAR (note to the future, invent pneumatic jumping cars), jumps the obstacle/plot hole/misplaced character/encroaching cupcake (okay, let’s be honest, I still eat the cupcake) and sticks a flag in the ground when he lands, warning Future Me HEY LOOK OUT THERE’S A PROBLEM BACK THERE, HAVE FUN DEALING WITH THAT SUCKER, I’LL BE UP HERE STILL WRITING LOL WOO TYPETYPETYPE.  (Turns out my voice of inner writing badANTZery shouts a lot too.  Who knew.)

So my first draft is a Haberdasheryscape of stuck-in comments like “omg this part, help” to “MORE BACKSTORY, WRITE IT LATER” to “jesus, so BORING”.  They say that writers are their own worst critics, and that certainly seems to be holding true at the moment.

In short, Present Me is a Darwin to Future Me, but at least Present Me gets to stay productive and keep moving so that Future Me will have the opportunity to do the same.