WRITING A NOVEL:  START TO FINISH, ENTRY TEN

GREAT PROGRESS THAT (F BOMB-ing) SUCKS

 

I only wrote about 600 words this week.  But I’m well satisfied.  I had a fellow writer ask me the other day how to write a necessary scene that is emotional for personal reasons.  I gave her the immortal words of Harry Crews:  Put your ass in the chair and write it.  I did that today to embarrassing consequences.  I’d driven to a café to write as home represented more yard work and another load of laundry to do.  I’m writing a scene where Thaddeus is at his grandpa’s bedside at the time of his death.  And it’s my own story.  It’s embellished very little.  And it’s, as could be expected, gut wrenching to write.  I’m writing and my eyes get all watery.  I look away, think about baseball or some such, then go back at it when the tears subside.  Then I’m all teared up again when the barista comes to my table and asks how my sandwich is.  I look up at her.  Embarrassed.  I tell her the sandwich is fine.  She asks if I’m fine.  I say, “Allergies.”  She, I’m pretty sure, fakes understanding.  Within a few minutes, I pack up and leave. 

            I put my ass in the chair.  I’d been avoiding the writing of this scene, and it’s not done yet.  It will be, later today.  When I’m at home.  I’d told the other writer some advice I’d pulled out of my ass—hey it’s nice to be asked advice via a private message on Facebook—I’d told her, “Arrange a reward for getting it done.”  Well, I don’t have a reward arranged.  I don’t have anything arranged.  I have more of the same to do later.  It will bum me out.  When I’m writing this scene, I’m there again.  I’m at his bedside dropping morphine into his mouth and listening to the jagged breaths, watching the rise and fall of his chest and expecting it to stop at a rise or a fall and never move again.  It fucking sucks.  My only hope is that I can convey just how much it fucking sucks to the reader.  Great progress though.