The Unpredictable Writing Process

It's always better to be a little optimistic. Science has proved that almost everyone is optimistic about themselves unless they're depressed.

It should be apparent from the fact that my novel draft is now 677 pages and I've been writing it, full time since 2009, that there are two things that have constantly frustrated my optimism: time and length. My estimates of time always prove embarrassingly optimistic, so does my estimate of length.

Where that applies to today, is I spent a total of five hours and twenty minutes writing 2,000 words. Actually, I pretty much copied and pasted this from my previous draft and spent all that time editing and tweaking it. I still have to finish one more pass. This will probably bring the work time up to six hours.

If I'm ever to make money writing, this would be a disaster. However, I write because it keeps me out of the hospital. I would hope from there to be able to turn that into a living, but perhaps I shouldn't be so optimistic.

Therefore, my money's on the table whether I win or not, and you can't win without playing.  

Confession about my sex life (Number 1)

I'll confess, because in some ways I hid this, sexually, I'm extremely liberal. I didn't start out that way. In my early adolescence, I identified very much with Brigitte from Ginger Snaps who said, "High school is just a breeding machine. A total hormonal toilet."  One reason I love that film is I spent my adolescence feeling at various times like either Ginger or Brigitte. (Except as a male). For all the well-deserved reputation teens have for being horny, what's usually glossed over some teens are actually frightened or repulsed by their blooming sexuality. I remember this. Some, also like myself, are angry that adolescence is being forced on them regardless of their say in the matter. They don't want to deal with it and keep themselves as far from anything sexual as possible.

Another reason why I like that film: the way the werewolf attacks Ginger at the onset of her first menstruation, drags her from a playground through a "gate" into a dark woods, where it chews her up. There's an undercurrent of child rape there. It's such a well thought-out scene.   

 I fought my adolescence with psychic fangs and claws. It won out, finally. The results were when I tried to hang out with other kids, I was either ignorant of what was going on or denial. I was even ignorant and in denial of my own sexual feelings. I did not want to deal with it.

In later adolescence, I was always amazed at how easily people had sex, because none of it was easy for me. Most of my problems were of my own making, but I wish I had been able to find a competent counselor who have guided me through it. My parents' marriage was a horrendous example. They stayed together, as the Catholic Church demanded they would, but I really think they might have been better off apart, even with my brother to take care of. I don't remember any affection between them. No other relationship in my extended family were healthy.

After I could no longer deny the changes, at about the age of nineteen, I was too socially backward, under-confident and ignorant of women to have any chance. Either I would chicken-out or I would miss the signals. As a result, I didn't have sex until well into my thirties. I also looked at my parents' marriage, and at my own troubled personality, and decided it would be better if I didn't marry and didn't have children. I don't regret the latter two. I knew I was damaged, and would make a horrendous husband and father.

So, that's how I got to my fifties without a significant other. The drama of adolescence definitely leaves its mark on adulthood.

As an atheist, I can declare that adulthood is the afterlife of childhood. Where you go as an adult very much depends on what happens to you during the ordeal of adolescence. For that reason, children and teenagers have more of right to tragedy and comedy than adults do.