It's not exactly writer's block, but yeah, it is. ;)
I have my final chapter to write, the most challenging of all.
About men, soldiers, trackers, in the jungle.
My previous chapters were about a country picnic, a formal ball, a town, a country estate... I always discovered that what I thought would be a short "sandwich" transition wound up turning into practically its own chapter.
Escribo a pulso. I don't have an outline. I think and think, for months, years. Then I "see" where the story must go.
Daily life gets in the way. Jobs. Birthdays and holidays. Car problems. Money worries. Laundry. Ironing. You name it.
When I finally get everything taken care of, it takes me a long time to settle down and get back to "Dreamtime". Then, more time till I start really typing in the new texts.
Actually, I will write the chapter, I will do it and surprise myself while I'm actually writing. I just don't force myself to write. I do an approach, a slow approach. Then suddenly it happens and I can't do anything else. I become totally absorbed.
These past few days I have been working, tweaking. I meant to get to the new chapter and start tying up the loose ends (meaning I have to re-read all the notes, the patchwork quilt, and what I've got written thus far, then... let the magic happen) but I came across other chapters, started re-reading and realized the text needed work.
So even though I haven't gotten to the chapter that needs writing, I am still being productive. Believe me, the first draft is always far from good enough to submit. And even making corrections is in itself, hardcore literary alchemy. Maybe the hardest part of writing. It's difficult enough to produce the first attempt, you think, "Wow! Congrats, Liz, you kick ass!" But in reality, I don't. It's a humble, faulty first attempt. It needs a lot more work. However, it does always contains flashes, and gems.
It's really hard to explain why a novel takes such a long time.
So instead of explaining I will just finish it!
Hahahaha. Truly, it is marvelous. I suck at writing, but writing is what really makes me happy, at the subjective, individual me level.
Also, it takes a surprisingly huge payload of free energy to write. It's exhausting. But hours and hours pass without you noticing. Your eyes just get really sore. Your shoulders, your backside from sitting. Your blood pools in your lower legs. Sounds awful, but it's true. You need to get up and move.
The weird thing is, all you want to do is keep writing. Keep going. You go to bed happy. You wake up happy.
I'm so thankful that the holidays are over, the car is fine, nobody writes or calls, my clients haven't sent translations to do, it's summer vacation time in Santiago and the city is pretty empty. Nothing happens here in the summer.
So I must take advantage.
It's 2:26am so I'll hit the sack! Buenas noches.
Oh... I have a total of 137.500 words, or around 500 pages. This is a rough count because I'm working on the second part and I'm counting notes and excerpts gathered from various sources, so I'm counting words that aren't mine. But it gives an approximate figure. My own text will probably equal the word count of the research notes and my own annotations of plot development.
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