What's the hold up?

I think I see your problem . . . or the thunder scares me.

Writing speed has been the major obstacle between me and professional writing. It's been a continual struggle and mystery to me as to why my fiction writing takes such a long time. Now that I'm becoming more and more organized in my approach, I've been able to spot something that gives me the obvious answer: I edit/rewrite a lot. That is to say, a lot for any writer.

Take chapter five in The Feral Bond. I've gone over it, rewriting and editing, a total of twenty-three times. Chapter six I've rewritten sixteen times now.

Why couldn't I spot this before? Because I just wasn't organized enough. I would go back and make changes by random choice, just as rewrites of random spots, but I did those not as a rewrite/edit from beginning to end of the chapter. It probably added up to as much or more rewriting than I currently do. Now that I'm actually making regular passes, I can see how much I'm driven to rewrite.

The good news for me is it isn't OCD, it isn't rewriting for rewriting's sake. It does have an end, a point where I know I've done enough of it, a point where I'm satisfied with the work. It just takes an incredible amount of changing, tweaking and tinkering to get there. My initial rewrites have major changes, and they diminish. 

Now, if I could just get more done with fewer passes. That would be the answer. I'll see if practice brings improvement.  

The Humbuggery Xmas Ramble

I remember that time in my childhood when my Dad enlisted help from his brother with the Christmas lights, because my father had in mind something big for the outdoor decorations. Lights on the porch, around the front window, in the bushes, a creche scene lit from above and from within.

Uncle Bill, like my Dad's other brothers, had an absolute contempt for safety precautions, especially when imposed by meddling bureaucrats. You can take your codes, St. Louis City, decorate your tree and stick the whole thing where the angel sits. He cut up these cheap strings of Christmas lights and spliced them all together with electrical tape. He put everything on a single circuit in a house that had old wiring and a less than competently installed fuse box. How the hell somebody didn't get electrocuted or the house didn't burn down, I don't know?  

Note that our terrace had no grass then, and maybe we didn't want to draw attention to that. Never mind, my Dad went ahead with it. Wouldn't you know, at the end of Christmas, my Dad took the entire tangled, jury-rigged kludge of lights, put it all away, and used it again the next year.  
 
I'll admit, Christmas wasn't all it could be this year, but then again, I'm an atheist. I call my winter holiday "Humbug," as declared by that great prophet of the 19th century, Ebeneezer Scrooge. But the idea of Humbug is no lights, no tree, no decorations, no presents, no cards, no Santa, no special movies or TV shows. I won't rule out music, but who am I anyway? You just get together with those closest to you and have three good meals.

We have this Christian celebration with so many pagan things hung on it, and we add in commercialism. Now Christmas is actually unhealthy for people. More accidents, more heart attacks, allergenic Christmas trees, and unsafe Christmas lights electrocuting people.

Pass the salt, please.

I can't at all complain about my work speed recently. I've integrated the two version of Chapter 5 in just 3-1/2 hours. My boss, that is to say I, am pleased.

The higher lithium dose has been a wonder drug. However, it's not without its annoying and disturbing side effect. A few times a day I get the shakes. They're exactly what they sound like. It seems a small price to pay for what the lithium is doing.

Lithium is actually Lithium Carbonate, a salt. The simplest psychiatric drug there is. I got curious because nobody, including my psychiatrist, seemed to know who discovered it and how. It seems the drug was discovered by accident by an Australian Psychiatrist, John Cade. He was injecting the urine of manic patients into guinea pigs, and needed a solvent to keep uric acid crystals from forming. So he gave the manic patients lithium as a solvent. To his surprise it relieved the mania.

Why didn't he get a Nobel Prize? Instead of Cade, the only psychiatrist ever to receive a Nobel Prize got it for inventing the frontal lobotomy, an now discredited surgery. But at the time, doctors embraced it as the cure-all.
 
My writing time tomorrow is short because I have a doctor's appointment. I'm considering I should get through at least a thousand words tomorrow, in about an hour and forty minutes. If I get that far I'll be happy.

Where does the rest of my time go? I read, currently Jonathon Franzen. Reading is terribly important to writing, (as Stephen King says and I believe) and I have a lot to catch up on. I'm going through a fellow writer's book for later group critique. That's necessary so my writers' group will do it for me. There's also learning, serious reading that takes longer, and is monotonous. My course of choice right now is Terms of Service. Yes, whenever I get anything and it asks me to accept the TOS, I print it up, put it in a folder. I'm just about caught up, and then I can move on to learning OpenOffice.

I went to a Sex+ event today at Shameless Grounds. The discussion was on homophobia in the African-American community. I was there for curiosity. I took notes and listened but didn't really participate. I'll add details on who gave the talk later, because I'm out of writing time now.

The guilt of taking a day off.

Writers are supposed to write all the time. Right? Write!

No, wrong. Today I've scheduled a day off. Catching up on movies, TV, Sudoku and Civ 4.

I completely finished Chapter 4 yesterday. Tomorrow I start on Chapter 5.

Mood upswing still holding

The medication change my shrink made has made a great improvement. I don't brood about anything. To my amazement, music sounds different. It's like the instrumental has been completely separated from the vocals. Before I took Strattera the two seemed entangled. After I could understand more of the lyrics. Now I could hear all of them. I find myself listening to the words. I would have never thought Lithium would be synergistic with ADHD medication, but my shrink made a good call.

My writing is continuing. I still can't tell if I'm actually faster or not. I should be able to tell soon.