Book Update #1: The Slow, Slow Slog of Sluffering

So as you know, if you've seen my new schedule, Tuesdays are "Book Update" day.

I have no idea if this will be interesting or worth reading to any of you, but I wanted to try out a new method of holding myself accountable.

As of this post, I have 71,384 words of Meltdown written. (Up from 0 on January 1st of this year). That's 123 pages of single-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font in Googledocs with 1/2 inch margins. Fifteen chapters.

Here is a graphic with the most frequently used words (besides common words like a, the, and so on); the bigger the word, the more often it appears.

As you can see, I use the word "Tasia" like... a lot. (Also, the word "like"). (If you want to try making one of these nifty thingies, check out the Wordle site. It's free and easy and super, super cool.)

Right now, the biggest obstacle that's keeping me from making progress is... I'm just bored. I hate the part of the story I've arrived at (aka, the middle). I know why Tasia needs to be where she is, doing what she's doing... it's just boring me.

And I know there's a lot of great advice out there about skipping over the boring parts, and "If you're bored, the reader will be bored." But the truth is, what's happening isn't actually boring. I'm just easily bored, and also very, very impatient for her to get to the part that comes next.

It just seems to be taking forever. 

And every day, there are 300 other things that are more urgent, more interesting, and/or easier to accomplish than sitting down and working on the novel. Like finishing the short story for the contest I entered last week. Or doing the 7 trillion dishes that have accumulated in the sink in the past 3.5 seconds. 

Sometimes, all I want is for some older, more accomplished writer to nod wisely at me and say, "It is alright, my child. This is a perfectly normal part of the process. Do not worry." (Because everyone knows, wise old sages do not use contractions.)

Barring that, I pass down this wisdom to those of you who are less experienced than I am, and who are maybe just as stuck:

It's alright.

This is a perfectly normal part of the process.

Don't worry.

All will be well, once you master Lotus position.

You'd think that after 4 (ok, 7, but only 4 that got me a degree, the other three I was pretty much just farting around) years of college, 13 years of writing experience, countless books of writing advice read, 2 (very very minor) publishing credits, and one blue ribbon from the county fair for my poem entitled, "Going to the Fair-O," I'd have at least a tiny idea of what it is I'm doing. But I don't. In the slightest. My writing process is the mental equivalent of a shirtless man under the hood of a truck, grass stalk between his teeth, tightening the radiator cap, because, "Well, shucks, Merv, let's try 'er and see how she idles."

Rough, Bill-Joe. She idles rough.