Progress

Ok, so it's 3:02 pm, and in a little under two hours I've written 3701 words, which is just shy of 15 pages. Damn! Of course, most of it is crap, but it just poured out. I worked on my original plan, and described one particular incident and got it all down. It's not well-written by any means. But some of the stuff I remembered seemed important. I had thought I wouldn't have such visual memories, that I'd have trouble with details, but it wasn't the case at all. I remembered all kinds of things. I need to work on refining my voice, how to tell the story in first person. How to do dialogue when it's hard to remember exactly what people said. Mostly though, it just wrote itself. Which is really heartening and may mean that I can stay with the plan I presented in my prospectus.

Except that I'm emotionally shredded. My heart was racing and I cried a few times as I wrote. I'm not entirely sure why it's affecting me so badly now, when I held up well throughout the research itself. I'm also not sure how I'll be able do this every day for the next many months. Well, the book says to write six days a week. At least for today, I've done a ton of writing and have the whole day stretched out ahead of me, and the fun art walk tonight. Maybe I can just focus on the feeling of progress and enjoy the day. I also had a glimpse last night of how telling this story could be empowering. Giving myself a voice has to be a way of dealing with grief, and at least in my own small way, I can call bullshit on all of it. Right now though, I feel like going back to bed and weeping a lost river.