Worlds apart

Some intense writ­ing today. I want­ed to make up for the time lost yes­ter­day in the Wal-Mart park­ing lot. I hoped I might push my total to 10,000 words today, but did­n’t get there and at this point I’m exhaust­ed. I need to set it down for the night. I wrote 2,825 words today which is the most I’ve writ­ten in one day since I start­ed keep­ing track on Fri­day, and I wrote mate­r­i­al that was­n’t pre­vi­ous­ly on the out­line so that’s a real­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry day.

Today’s writ­ing took me in some unex­pect­ed direc­tions. Two of my periph­er­al char­ac­ters got some more depth and I had some ideas for future sub­plots for those two. The scene I wrote today is fun­ny and beau­ti­ful and heart­break­ing. It expos­es the char­ac­ters and promis­es more. It hints at the very core of what not just this nov­el but the whole series is about, and it telegraphs events that are to come.

And out of con­text it seems so ran­dom and sil­ly: most of what I wrote today was a con­ver­sa­tion in the White House between the White House Chief of Staff and an extrater­res­tri­al woman. They speak in Russ­ian about his first kiss. And the things the alien Ambas­sador says to the Chief of Staff about being human made me cry as I wrote it.

I real­ly hope that look­ing at it lat­er it is not as ter­ri­ble as I just made it sound. But this is where it’s lead­ing me. Bet­ter to have words down and delete them lat­er than not to have explored this avenue.

Though today was Vot­ing Day (and Guy Fawkes Day) I failed to vote. I have a vari­ety of excus­es but it comes down to it being dif­fi­cult to get excit­ed about vot­ing on a bal­lot where all the can­di­dates are run­ning unop­posed. Democ­ra­cy is alive and well some­where, but not in San Francisco.